And yet his first approach to Parliament was not easy. Some of the young enthusiasts who now gathered round him wanted him to stand for Merionethshire in the General Election that soon followed in 1886. But here there was another son of young Wales already in the field with stronger local claims. This was none other than the man always known afterwards as “Tom” Ellis, son of a Merionethshire farmer. Ellis was four years older than Lloyd George; and young David readily and instantly stood aside in favour of the elder man. They met soon after; and a great friendship struck up between them which lasted until the premature death of Tom Ellis in 1899. It was a wonderful friendship between two men of common aspirations but utterly different character. Tom Ellis was by no means the “Welsh Parnell”—no description could have been further from the truth. He was a man of high enthusiasms and noble integrity. He was a real Welsh Nationalist. But, by going to Oxford, he had come within the governing English circle; he was touched with that Saxonism which tempers the native zeal of the Celt. He was no longer “racy of the soil.” It was no mere chance that he was afterwards drawn before his due season into the circle of British power, and was fated to stand aloof from his friend when Lloyd George was asserting the rugged and relentless claims of Welsh Nationalism. Thus David Lloyd George was for the moment delayed in his progress to Parliament. Perhaps this was a fortunate accident, because it gave him a breathing time in which to master the needs of his own people and to train himself more thoroughly for the public stage. CHAPTER V MARRIAGE “A Daniel come to judgment! Yea, a Daniel! O wise young judge, how I do honour thee!” SHAKESPEARE’S _Merchant of Venice_, Act I, Sc. iv. CUT off from Parliament for the moment (1886) David Lloyd George spent no time in vain regrets. He resumed that life of combined public and private activity which was rapidly becoming his second nature. His diaries during the following years show that he was now absorbed in his growing “practice.” But that did not prevent him from continuing his eager and active interest in public affairs. Then, as ever after, the two interests developed together. From this time forward he steadily directed his energies to work on behalf of his own beloved little nation. Perhaps never did he quite lose sight of that high ambition to command “listening senates” which had come to him when he first sat in the Gallery at Westminster and looked down on the combats of the great parliamentary gladiators. But for the moment there was urgent work to do nearer to hand; and David Lloyd George knew the wisdom of Carlyle’s great law of conduct—“Do the Duty that lies nearest thee.”[21] So he plunged into the great work for Wales which was already on foot at his own doors.