Presently the sun came out with golden glow, and with the sun came out Mrs. Stacpoole.  It was a job to “pose” the subjects, the old woman evidently suspecting some surgical or legal significance in the machinery displayed, and her son finding some trouble in making her understand what it meant.  But finally we got the tall, personable sergeant, with his frank, shrewd, sensible face, to put himself between the two, in the attitude as of a guardian angel; the camera was nimbly adjusted, and lo! the thing was done.

Mrs. Stacpoole thinks the operation promises a success.  I suppose it would hardly be civil to send a finished proof of the group to Mr. J. Redmond, M.P.

APPENDIX.

NOTE A.

MR. GLADSTONE AND THE AMERICAN WAR. (Prologue, p. xxix.)

This statement as to the action of Lord Palmerston in connection with Mr. Gladstone’s Newcastle speech of October 7th, 1862, made upon the authority of a British public man whose years and position entitle him to speak with confidence on such a subject, appeared to me of so much interest, that after sending it to the printer I caused search to be made for the speech referred to as made by Sir George Cornewall Lewis.  My informant’s statement was that Lord Palmerston insisted that Sir George Lewis should find or make an immediate opportunity of covering what Mr. Gladstone had said at Newcastle.  He was angry about it, and his anger was increased by an article which Mr. Delane printed in the Times, intimating that Mr. Gladstone’s speech was considered by many people to be a betrayal of Cabinet secrets.  Sir George Lewis was far from well (he died the next spring), and reluctant to do what his chief wished; but he did it on the 17th of October 1862 in a speech at Hereford.  Mr. Milner-Gibson was also put forward to the same end, and after Parliament met, in February 1863, Mr. Disraeli gave the Government a sharp lashing for sending one or two Ministers into the country in the recess to announce that the Southern States would be recognised, and then putting forward the President of the Board of Trade (Milner-Gibson) to attack the Southern States and the pestilent institution of slavery.  Mr. Gladstone’s speech at Newcastle, coming as it did from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, after the close of a session during which everybody knew that the Emperor of the French had been urging upon England the recognition of the Confederate States, and that Mr. Mason had been in active correspondence on that subject with Lord Russell, was taken at Newcastle, and throughout the country, to mean that the recognition was imminent.  Mr. Gladstone even went so far as to say he rather rejoiced that the Confederates had not been able to hold Maryland, as that might have made them aggressive, and so made a settlement more difficult, it being, he said, as certain as anything in the future could be that the South must succeed in separating itself from the Union.  This remark about Maryland distinctly indicated consultation as to what limits and boundaries between the South and the North should be recognised in the recognition, and on that account, it seems, was particularly resented by Earl Russell as well as by Lord Palmerston.