and my little play imagines the losing of a vote that
would have at least made the numbers equal, through
so slight a cause as a quarrel between two strolling
vagabonds, that disturbs the attention of a servant
from watching the moment to call his master, who
would have cast his vote against the Bill.

I see in some notes made before the writing that I
had planned "a human comedy, the changing of sides
of man and wife," and that if she helps to a victory for
the over-Government "to bring away the Parliament
out of Ireland" it is against her own conviction, and
but to save her husband from drunkenness and gain a
home for herself, and that in so doing it is likely she
would be praised by moralists, but the common people
would put their curse upon her and him as they have
put it on the even less responsible Wrens that lost
Ireland a victory through awakening the Danish
sentinels by pecking at the crumbs upon their drums.

Sometimes in making a plan for a plan for a play I set the
scene in some other country that I may be sure the
emotion displayed is not bounded by any neighbour-
hood but is a universal one. And I see upon a forgot-
ten stray page that the persons of the play in my mind
were at one time an Athenian who is for the victory
of his city and quarrels with his wife who belongs to
Sparta. But he is too fond of the wine cup to be of
much use to the one or the other side, and hearing that
the Spartans are at the very gates of Athens be is
persuaded to abstain from the juice of grape or barley
until their victory is declared, and this he is assured,
will be before nightfall. Then the wife turns round

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