“Ah, Scanlan, yours are the true gifts, take my word for it!--the recognized currency by which a man obtains what he seeks for; and there never was an era in which such qualities bore a higher value. Our statesmen, our diplomatists, our essay-writers,--nay, our very poets, addressing themselves as they do to the correction of social wrongs and class inequalities,--they are all 'practical'! That is the type of our time, and future historians will talk of this as the 'Age of Fact'!” If one were to judge from Maurice Scanlan's face during the delivery of this peroration, it might be possibly inferred that he scarcely accepted the speech as an illustration in point, since anything less practical he had never listened to. “When I think,” resumed he, “what a different effect I should have produced in the 'House' had I possessed this requisite! You, possibly, may be under the impression that I achieved a great success?” “Well, I did hear as much,” said Scanlan, half doggedly. “Perhaps it was so. A first speech, you are aware, is always listened to indulgently; not so a second, especially if a man rises soon after his first effort. They begin to suspect they have got a talkative fellow, eager and ready to speak on every question; they dread that, and even if he be clever, they 'll vote him a bore!” “Faith! I don't wonder at it!” said Maurice, with a hearty sincerity in the tone. “Yet, after all, Scanlan, let us be just! How in Heaven's name, are men to become debaters, except by this same training? You require men not alone to be strong upon the mass of questions that come up in debate, but you expect them to be prompt with their explanations, always prepared with their replies. Not ransacking history, or searching through 'Hansard,' you want a man who, at the spur of the moment, can rise to defend, to explain, to simplify, or mayhap to assail, to denounce, to annihilate. Is n't that true?” “I don't want any such thing, sir!” said Scanlan, with a sulky determination that there was no misunderstanding. “You don't. Well, what _do_ you ask for?” “I'll tell you, sir, and in very few words, too, what I do _not_ ask for! I don't ask to be humbugged, listening to this, that, and the other, that I have nothing to say to; to hear how you failed or why you succeeded; what you did or what you could n't do. I put a plain case to you, and I wanted as plain an answer. And as to your flattering me about being practical, or whatever you call it, it's a clean waste of time, neither less nor more!” “The agency and the niece!” said Massingbred, with a calm solemnity that this speech had never disconcerted. “Them 's the conditions!” said Scanlan, reddening over face and forehead.