Kenealy succeeded in placing on the paper a motion in favour of triennial Parliaments very shortly after his first unfavourable introduction into the House. It was long after midnight when he rose to speak. He began at the beginning and favoured us with an analysis of the characteristics of the first gathering of a representative assembly under Alfred the Great. Sir Wilfred Lawson almost immediately rose to inquire whether the hour were not somewhat too advanced for a disquisition on parliamentary history, the facts of which were available to everybody, and Kenealy passionately retorted that he was in possession of the ear of the House, that he would stand upon his rights, would adopt his own methods and would speak at what length he chose. In answer to this defiance, the House rose _en masse_ and its members solemnly filed away, leaving Kenealy to address the Speaker, the clerks at the table and a handful of reporters in the gallery. He struggled on for awhile, but by and by a member returned and drew the attention of the Speaker to the very obvious fact that there were not forty members present. The Speaker rose under his canopy and waved his cocked hat solemnly towards Kenealy and then towards the other occupant of the House.
"There are not forty members present," he said solemnly, "the House is now adjourned." That was the result of Dr Kenealy's first essay and in his second he came to final and irremediable grief. In a crowded House, he arose to impeach his enemies and traducers. He was ploughing along and I was fighting after him in my own gouty, inefficient shorthand, when one of the strangest premonitions of my life occurred to me. He said "If any of these unjust aspersions are cast anew upon me"--and I seemed to know as absolutely what he was going to say as if the whole thing were a play which I had seen rehearsed a score of times. I thought, "I hope to heaven he won't say that," and he went on in the very words my mind forebode. "If these unjust aspersions are cast upon me, I shall shake them from me as the lion shakes the dew-drops from his mane." There was a second's silence as he paused, and then there was a crash of laughter with peal on peal to follow. Three times I have known the House of Commons surrendered to illimitable mirth and on each occasion the victim of its derision is somewhat pitiable. But poor Kenealy! he stood there lost, astounded, vacant, a quite tragic figure, and when the crowded House had ceased to laugh out of pure exhaustion, he spoke again in a tone completely changed; all the forensic manner gone out of him. That he could find a voice at all after such a scathing was an evidence of his courage, but with that unfortunate sentence he had shot his bolt. He never attempted to address the House again. I do not remember even to have seen him within its precincts after that catastrophe.