It is curious that very few statesmen indeed have led the House of Commons in their old age. It may be said that Lord John Russell was the first to do so; Lord Palmerston also was very old before he obtained office. And so chatted the Grand Old Man, in the most fascinating and delightful manner. He was always the same on such occasions, entering into the spirit of the entertainment, and, as was his habit, forgetting for the time everything else. When my old friend William Woodall, M.P. for Stoke (Governor-General of the Ordnance in Mr. Gladstone's Government 1885), gave at St. Anne's Mansions his famous "Sandwich Soirees" to his friends, the spacious ballroom on the ground floor packed with his many friends--a characteristic, polyglot gathering of Ministers and Parliamentarians of all kinds, musicians, dramatists, authors, artists, actors, and journalists, who sang, recited, and gave a gratuitous entertainment (for some of these I acted as his hon. secretary, and helped to get together a collection of modern paintings on the walls, besides designing the invitations)--I recollect the greatest success was the Grand Old Man. There was "standing room" only, but a chair was provided for Mr. Gladstone in the centre of the huge circle which had formed around the mesmerist Verbeck. Many guests sat on the floor, to afford those behind a better chance of seeing. The Prime Minister, noticing this, absolutely declined to be an exception, and he squatted "a la Turk" on the floor. I confess this struck me as "playing to the gallery." It certainly was playing to the Press, for Mr. Gladstone's attitude on that occasion was paragraphed all over the country, by means of which fact I have here refreshed my memory. In fact, Mr. Gladstone was always _en evidence_. When the great statesman dined with Toby, M.P., I was sitting close to him. He had dispensed with his own shirt-collars, and wore quite the smallest, slenderest, and most inconspicuous of narrow, turn-down collars, assumed for that occasion only. "One of Herbert's cast-offs," someone whispered to me. "That's strange," said another guest to me. "Last night at dinner the pin in the back of Gladstone's collar came out, and as he got excited, the collar rose round his head, and we all agreed that 'Furniss ought to have witnessed what he has so often drawn, but never seen.'" [Illustration: MR. GLADSTONE SITS ON THE FLOOR.] Mr. Lucy has made the statement that Mr. Gladstone was "a constant student of _Punch_" and "knew no occasion upon which he was not able to join in the general merriment of the public; but hadn't there been enough about the fabulous collars?" I received an editorial order to bury them, "but before long they were out again, flapping their folds in the political breeze." [Illustration: THE FRAGMENT OF _PUNCH_ MR. GLADSTONE DID _NOT_ SEE.]