Page:Wives of the prime ministers, 1844-1906.djvu/273



HE speaker in his remarks on the previous toast implied that it was a good sign of a mother to have a good son. But he thought there was another relationship in life in which there was a good deal of sympathy. They would always find where they had a good sort of fellow—they might depend upon it—he had a good wife. At all events, he pitied the man with any interest in public events or any public duty to discharge who, when he goes home, finds a wife who knows nothing and cares nothing about it. That, he was glad to say, was not his case. He had a wife who was a keen politician; like most women, she was a keen partisan and had a very great appreciation of all who supported her husband, and, he was afraid, she was not without resentment against those who did not. He need hardly say that his wife shared the anxiety of these days and also the buoyancy of spirits and 233