Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/745

336 Year's meeting of the Social Democratic Federation at the Holborn Town Hall, and made there a short, but noble and touching speech on behalf of unity. Two days afterwards, he gave the last of his Sunday evening lectures at Kelmscott House. The subject of the lecture was "One Socialist Party." "Could not sleep at night," he writes in his diary the next day; "got up and worked from 1 to 4 at Sundering Flood."

On the 31st of January he attended a meeting, at the Society of Arts, of the Society for Checking the Abuses of Public Advertising, and made a brief speech in support of the first resolution moved. He never spoke in public again after this. On the day before, he had been for the last time at the weekly meeting of the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings. As he walked up Buckingham Street after the meeting, a friend ventured to observe, noting his obvious weakness, that it was the worst time of the year. 'No, it ain't," he returned, "it's a very fine time of the year indeed: I'm getting old, that's what it is."

On the 27th of November he had written from Rottingdean, where he had gone for a few days by himself, to Lady Burne-Jones:

"To-day has been quite mild, and I started out at ten and went to a mountain with some barns on the top, and a chalk pit near (where you took me one hot evening in September, you remember), and I walked on thence a good way, and should have gone further, but prudence rather than weariness turned me back. They were ploughing a field in the bottom with no less than ten teams of great big horses: they were knocking off for their bever just as I came on them, and seemed very jolly, and my heart went out to them, both men and horses.

"I brought my University book"—this was Mr.