Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1893 — Air. Gladstone at Home. [ARTICLE]

Air. Gladstone at Home.

When relieved from the affairs of state, Mr. Gladstone finds no pleasure so great as his home life at Hawarden. There his family are gathered together, and the great man romps and plays with his grandchildren as though he never knew what it was to be blamed for everything that went wrong in all Great Britain aud her colonies. Air. Gladstone is a wonderful scholar, a busy writer and speaker, but the little Gladstone children know him best as a good, kind grandfather who is fond of fun. He, too, would prefer to qnjov their company rather than to he surrounded by England’s great men at an all-night session of Parliament. His only recreations are walking, and—this is really very funny—chopping down trees. Our great George Washington, according to tradition, had a like fondness in his youth, but by the tima he became President he had probably outgrown such, fancies. Ala Gladstone, however, is an expert woodsman, and though he doesn’t destroy valuable cherry trees, he goes out with his axe and takes the keenest pleasure in felling trees in Hawarden Park, A visitor to the castle one day noticed an axe behind the door in the great hall, where it had been left by the statesman after one of his chopping expeditions. A curious ornament for such a place, it seems. It may be out of compliment to the boy George Washington and his hatchet that the. “Grand Old Man” prefers to use r.u American axe.—[Harper’s Young People. The carnival veil is the fad of the hour in vrilture.