The character of the bill as well as the lukewarm attitude of the House toward it made a fine opening for Mr. Kelley, and he thoroughly enjoyed himself riddling it. He was an impressive speaker with a sonorous voice which had been carefully trained, for Kelley once had thought of going on the stage, and in preparation had studied with both Booth and Barrett. He now went at the measure with joy, and in the course of his speech gibed Wood unmercifully for yielding to a rhetorical temptation which seems to beset every writer who speaks on taxation; that is, imitating Sydney Smith’s famous paragraph on the overtaxed English farmer. In introducing his bill Wood had said: “The farmer in the West, where lumber is scarce, pays a tax of 20 per cent on the lumber his house is built of; a tax of 35 per cent on the paint it is painted with; of 60 per cent on his window glass; of 35 per cent on the nails; of 53 per cent on the screws; of 30 per cent on the door-locks; of from 35 to 40 per cent on the hinges; of 35 per cent on the wallpaper; of from 60 to 70 per cent on his carpet; of 40 per cent on his crockery; of 38 per cent on his iron hollowware; of 35 per cent on his cutlery; 40 per cent on his glassware; of from 35 per cent to 40 per cent on the linen he uses in his household; of 51 per cent on the common castile soap he uses; 48 per cent on the starch—” And so on, ending up: “Suffice it to say that the furnishings of his child’s cradle and the coffin in which he is finally buried pay a direct tax or one enhanced in price by our tariff system.” Kelley sat smiling through the passage, and when he came to discuss the bill said: “I was amused by the chairman’s expression of sympathy with the overtaxed farmer.... It was so amusing to note the gravity and pathos with which he started his poor farmer out to buy taxed hardware, shoes, etc., for himself and clothes and medicine for his wife. When I first read that gem of his speech in my youth, or earliest manhood, just after Sydney Smith had produced it, it made an impression on my mind that still lingers. But I have become so used to hearing it that when he commenced its delivery with such fine effect I found myself in the condition of Diggory in ‘She stoops to Conquer’: ‘Diggory, you talk too much,’ the squire said; ‘you must neither talk nor laugh while attending on this party,’ ‘Ecod, Squire, then you must not tell that story of old Grouse in the gun-room, because I have been so used to laughing at that story for the last twenty years that I am afraid I can’t hold myself.’