The scene and the atmosphere were sufficiently Arctic to bear out the comparison. The audience had long since fallen away, like leaves in wintry weather. In ordinary circumstances Sir Ellis, an old Parliamentary Hand, would have wound up his speech, and so made an end of it, just before the stroke of midnight gave the signal for the Speaker's leaving the chair. There were, however, two reasons, the agony of whose weight must have pressed sorely on the orator. One was the recollection of an incident in his career still talked of in the busy circles round Sheffield. One night in yesteryear he was announced to deliver a speech at a meeting held in Nottingham. "For greater accuracy"--as the Speaker says, when, coming back from the House of Lords on the opening day of a Session, he reads the Queen's Speech to hon. members who have two hours earlier studied it in the evening papers--Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett had written out his oration and supplied it to the Sheffield paper whose recognition of his status as a statesman merits reward. Proceedings at the Nottingham meeting were so protracted, and took such different lines from those projected, that the orator of the evening, when his turn came, found the night too far advanced for his ordered speech, which would in other respects have been beside the mark. He accordingly, impromptu, delivered quite another speech, probably better than the one laboriously prepared in the seclusion of the closet. In the hurry and excitement of the moment he forgot to warn the Sheffield editor, with the consequence that the other speech was printed in full and formed the groundwork of a laudatory leading article. [Illustration: SIR ELLIS ASHMEAD-BARTLETT.]