The first time I ever spoke in public was at a large meeting (seven or eight hundred) held in the St. Martin’s Town Hall, when at an hour or two’s notice I took the place of the late Earl of Winchilsea, and, in reply to his bidding by telegram, discoursed for fifteen minutes on the position of women in Agriculture, a subject in which I was much interested at the time. I spoke from notes only, having a horror of a read paper, which is always exasperating or inaudible. Most speeches are too low and too long. The fifteen minutes appeared to be nothing, but the moments of waiting were torture until the first words had come forth. When one’s knees shake, and one’s tongue seems to cleave to the roof of the mouth, when the audience dances like myriads of fireflies before one’s eyes, the misery is so awful that the result is not worth the effort. Women are often excellent speakers, both in matter and style, and those who have an equal amount of practice are quite as good as the best men. Nevertheless, after-dinner speaking is, alas, far more often boring than entertaining, and one regrets a bell does not ring after five minutes, as a gentle hint to sit down. The poor speaker seldom knows when the right moment to end has arrived. Everyone is shy about something. The rough-edged shyness of youth wears away, but we each remain tender somewhere. Shyness overpowers me when making a speech, or on hearing my name roared into a room full of people. The first makes me sick, in spite of having addressed an audience of three thousand people, which I find easier than thirty; the second makes me wish to run away. “I’m shy,” is the excuse of youth to cover rudeness. Gauche, awkward, ill-mannered boys and girls call these delinquencies shyness. Being shy, however, is no extenuation of being discourteous. It is merely selfish self-conceit allowed to run rampant instead of being checked. How much easier it is to form a bad impression than to destroy one. We are all imperfect, but the only chance of bettering ourselves is to realise the fact early and try self-reform. I have been fighting faults all my life, and although I have overcome some of them—and I shan’t tell you what they are—a vast crop still remain to be mowed down by the scythe of Time. The question of women and the suffrage is now so important that it is impossible for any thinking man or woman not to have an opinion on the subject. What a curious thing it is that Liberals who stand for Progress fear this onward movement. Is it because they think women in the main are conservative? On the 6th of February, 1907, at the time when the Women Suffragists were being marched in scores to prison, and big processions were being organised, and endless fusses and excitements were in the air, _Punch_ wrote an amusing article, sweeping away the House of Lords, and substituting for it a _House of Ladies_.