Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/68

 in the firm mouth and strong jaw—gifts worth nearly all the rest in the art of governing men. He dressed in complete disregard of conventional prejudices. A Chancellor of the Exchequer in a plum-coloured vest was a sight as perplexing to trim propriety as Roland's shoe-ties in the Court of Louis XVI. And he cultivated on his chin an ornament rarely seen and little loved north of Calais, a goatee.

I kept a diary at this time, often abandoned for weeks and even months, but tolerably certain to contain whatever I desired to remember accurately. I will have recourse to it occasionally as a safer guide than memory.

"Disraeli, I noted, sat during a debate in dumb abstraction, never cheering and never interjecting a denial. There he sat, the man who re-created his party; surely a great achievement. I have no doubt he loses friends by his apparent insouciance and the method in which he walks to his place—without looking at anybody; but I surmise from my own experience that it arises from near-sightedness. I perceive that he cannot tell what o'clock it is without using his glass, and somebody told me lately that he saw him hailing a police van, mistaking it for an omnibus. His face is often haggard and his air weary and disappointed, but he has the brow and eyes of a poet, which are always pleasant to look upon. He generally says the right thing at the right minute, and in the right way, and he is lustily cheered; but sitting among the Opposition I have abundant reason to note that he is not completely trusted. It is said that young Stanley, and other youngsters of his class, believe in him, and that the man who is so taciturn in Parliament is a charming companion among his familiars, and is a gracious and genial host. Some of his post-prandial mots steal out, and I should think make fatal enemies. Somebody asked him lately if Lord Robert M. was not a stupid ass. 'No, no,' said Benjamin, 'not at all; he is a clever ass.'

"Benjamin, the son of Isaac, only the second Englishman of his race, had his path strewn with difficulties like chevaux de frise, but how splendidly he overcame them all! A mutual friend told me that he predicts Gladstone will come to power, and that he will create an appetite for strong things which it will be impossible to satisfy, with the sure result of giving