Part 3

"Sorry for 'em," said BALLYKILBEG, looking up towards crowded galleries. "They're a poor-looking lot. Don't believe there's a Master of an Orange Lodge among 'em. Anyhow they're all out of it. My man is WILFRID LAWSON. Don't mean to say he put me up to ask the question with any ulterior personal views. But he knew what I was at, and he knows my opinion of him. We don't agree in politics, and he's not sound on the Pope of Rome. But for verse that fetches you, the poetry you can understand without first tying wet cloth round your head, give me WILFRID LAWSON. PRINCE ARTHUR refers me to THE MARKISS. I'll call and see him, taking with me a choice selection of WILFRID'S verse, which I'll read to him."

_Business done._--Votes in Supply.

_Tuesday._--Scotch votes on; the WEIRISOME WEIR stands where he did, at corner seat of front bench below Gangway. This convenient situation for fixing Corporal HANBURY with gleaming eye. Also the metal grating which serves as flooring of House is useful as adding reverberating sound to WEIRISOME'S voice when occasion makes it desirable it should issue from his boots. If it were not for the matting laid over the grating, effect would be much more tremendous. WEIRISOME makes the best of it. Blood curdling to hear him just now denouncing some Procurator Fiscal whose office is in Edinburgh, and his house in Ross-shire. Or is it the other way about? The worst of WEIRISOME making our flesh creep by his ventriloquial talents is, that we get a little mixed about his points. However it was, the Procurator Fiscal had committed a heinous crime. Only by exercise of supernatural forbearance that WEIRISOME refrained from moving to reduce salary of Secretary for Scotland by £2000.

Effect of supernatural rumblings of his voice increased by ghastly pauses in flow of conversation. HANBURY, as yet new to post of Financial Secretary, will by-and-by get accustomed to its trials. Meanwhile it is painful for Cap'en TOMMY BOWLES, moored immediately behind his old colleague, to observe his hair gradually standing up whilst House is hushed in awesome silence what time WEIRISOME is solemnly reaffixing his _pince-nez_ with intent to continue his remarks.

Chairman more than once attempted to fill up pauses by reminding WEIRISOME what was the precise bearing of vote before Committee. Once sternly threatened to inforce rule which permits Chairman to order a rambling speaker to shut up, and sit down. WEIRISOME apparently paid no attention. A few minutes later, fancying he saw sign of movement in the Chair, he stopped; with wide sweep of arm put on his _pince-nez_; held manuscript up with apparent intention of consulting it; covertly regarded JAMES W. over the top. Concluding he meant business, WEIRISOME, without another word, solemnly, slowly--to the agonised looker on the process seemed to occupy sixty seconds--dropped into his seat.

_Business done._--A good deal in Committee of Supply.

_Friday, 2 A.M._--It is the unexpected that ever happens in House of Commons. Wednesday is ordinarily humdrum day; SPEAKER takes Chair at noon; all over before six. Accordingly, having met at noon on Wednesday, House sat till two o'clock next morning, proceedings culminating with scene in which DICK WEBSTER, of all men, was convicted of disorderly conduct.

"Really," said J. G. TALBOT, nervously rubbing his hands, "I don't know what we shall see next. Probably the Chaplain, in full canonicals, conducted to Clock Tower by Serjeant-at-Arms for having spoken disrespectfully of the Archbishop of CANTERBURY. The sooner this Session is over, the better it will be for Church and State."

By way of balancing eccentricity of uproarious Wednesday, the sitting just drawing to close has been unrelievedly dull. Yet it was the sitting solemnly set aside for Irish votes. Battle-royal expected, with nothing left at its close but few fragments that had once been GERALD BALFOUR, and here and there the limb of an Irish Member. Nothing happened, not even a division. Only long succession of dreary diatribes, with GERALD BALFOUR occasionally interposing with new promise of benignant sway.

"Very odd," said Truculent TIM, annoyed to find himself mollified. "The voice of the new Chief Secretary is uncommonly like the voice of ARTHUR BALFOUR. But the hands promise to rule after the fashion of the hands of JOHN MORLEY."

_Business done._--All the Irish votes passed.

_Friday._--House sat to-day, pegging away again at Supply, so as to prorogue next week. Navy Votes on; Cap'en TOMMY BOWLES attempts to boss the show, making light of Lord High Admiral JOKIM, openly alluding to Corporal HANBURY as a horse-marine, this too much for an ancient friendship strained by altered circumstances.

"TOMMY," said the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, turning round upon his former ally, after he had been up for twentieth time dictating marine tactics to the Sea Lords and policy to the First Lord; "did you ever hear a story LUBBOCK tells about the Maori convert? As he had not been seen for some weeks inquiry was made as to his welfare. 'Oh,' explained the chief of his tribe, 'he gave us so much good advice that at last we put him to death.' Think it over TOMMY. It's a nice story, and there's a moral in it."

_Business done._--Nearly all.

* * * * *

* * * * *

A PIECE FULL OF POINT.

Messrs. CLEMENT SCOTT and BRANDON THOMAS are to be congratulated on the success of their adaptation of the _Maître d'Armes_, produced at the Adelphi Theatre on Saturday last. The play, which appeared, like the longest remembered dramas of the late DION BOUCICAULT, in August--traditionally "the dead season of the stage"--seems destined to be as popular as the best-liked of its predecessors. For once--but, it is to be hoped, not "and away"--Mr. WILLIAM TERRISS has a chance of showing his quality in a character worthier of his powers than the customary hero of "walking gentleman" romance. Like Mr. HENRY NEVILLE when he appeared as _Henry Dunbar_, after a long course of _Ticket of Leave Man_, Mr. TERRISS makes the most of his opportunity. Miss MILLWARD is excellent as the child of the fencer--a criticism which applies equally "to every one concerned." Well written, well mounted, and well played, there is no reason why _The Swordsman's Daughter_ should not prove the truth of heredity and "run through"--the season.

* * * * *

"Full of wise saws" is "Amateur Angler," in the _Fishing Gazette_, concerning the river Wye. He complains that "he tried for trout, but caught chub," which, however, we are told "is a comely fish"--quite chub-stantial, doubtless--and "gives as much sport, at times, as a gentlemanly trout." "Lordly salmon" are also to be found. Evidently the Wye is peopled by the upper crust of the piscatorial world, and this, perhaps, explains the reason for "the river being netted and poached in every conceivable way," or wye, as Cockneys say.

* * * * *

With sorrow we read, in the _South Wales Daily News_, the announcement of the demise of "Billy," the celebrated goat, that for ten years had been an honoured and favourite member of the First Battalion, Welsh Regiment. This excellent animal, who died from the ravages of rheumatism contracted on the march, seems to have belonged to the "giddy" species of goat, for we learn that "he could hold his own with the best in drinking stout, beer, wine, or spirits." With these Anti-Local Veto propensities, it would not have been astonishing had the bibulous "Billy," like a certain historical personage, met with his end by drowning in a butt.

* * * * *

A DIALOGUE OF THE NIGHT.

["The art of setting forth a scene, an incident, in the shape of conversation natural, fluent, easy, and witty, is not so common an accomplishment as the large supply produced on Mr. CRAUFURD'S demand may seem to suggest."--_The "Daily News" on "Dialogues of the Day" edited by Mr. Oswald Craufurd._]

SCENE--_The Elysian Fields, at nightfall._

PRESENT--_The shades of_ Lord _and_ Lady SPARKISH, Lord _and_ Lady SMART, Colonel ALWIT, Mr. NEVEROUT, Miss NOTABLE, _and some other characters in_ Dean SWIFT'S "_Polite Conversation_."

_Lady Smart_ (_laying down her book with a yawn_). Egad! Our posterity cannot _talk_, they can only prattle.

_Lord Sparkish._ Or rather _patter_.

_Miss Notable._ Pray, my lord, what is "patter"?

_Lord Sparkish._ All sauciness and slang, like the soliloquy of a Cheap Jack.

_Mr. Neverout._ Modish conversation, to-day, seems to borrow its diction from the music-hall, and its repartee from the 'bus conductor.

_Miss Notable._ Oh fie! Now our "Polite and Ingenious Conversation," as the dear Dean of ST. PATRICK reported it, was vastly different. Did not Mr. SWIFT declare that he defied all the clubs and coffee-houses in the town to equal it in wit, humour, smartness or politeness?

_Lady Sparkish._ Yes; yes, indeed! And he had scruples about prostituting "this noble art to mean and vulgar people."

_Mr. Neverout._ Egad, the penny daily paper and the sixpenny illustrated weekly have altered all that. "Mean and vulgar people" now write books and journals, as well as read 'em.

_Miss Notable._ For my part I don't like dialogues, except upon the stage. They are so mortally dull.

_Lady Sparkish._ Nay, but my dear girl, the Dean says, you must remember, "Dialogue is held the best method of inculcating any part of knowledge; and I am confident that public schools will soon be founded for teaching wit and politeness, after my scheme, to young people of quality and fortune."

_Mr. Neverout._ Perhaps the present rage for dialogues is the first step in that direction.

_Lady Answerall._ Pah! there _are_ no "young persons of quality" now!

_Lord Sparkish._ Though plenty of young persons of fortune!

_Mr. Neverout._ Quite a different thing, my Lord! In _our_ days School Boards, Labour Members, and American Millionaires had not been invented. CREECH had indeed translated HORACE into the vernacular, but JOWETT had not Englished the Platonic Dialogues for the benefit of Extension Lectures and hack journalists.

_Colonel Alwit._ Faith, I could never stomach that inquisitive bore SOCRATES and his dreary dialoguists. That gay, wicked, but debonair dog, LUCIAN, was more to my mind.

_Mr. Neverout._ Ah! who of our latter-day dialogue-mongers could equal the smart and really _quite fin-de-siècle_ cynic of SAMOSATA?

_Miss Notable._ Well, as TIBBALDS, said:--

"I am no schollard, but I am polite, Therefore be sure I'm no Jacobite."

So I've not read your LUCIANS and PLATOS and things. But I like _Gyp_, and _Anthony Hope_. I vow he hath a true touch of "the quality," and he vastly delights me.

_Mr. Neverout._ Does he not go nigh to make you blush, now and anon?

_Miss Notable._ Blush? Ay, blush like a blue dog.

_Lady Smart._ Still I maintain the Town to-day cannot _talk_.

_Mr. Neverout._ Any more than it can write letters.

_Lady Sparkish._ There is nought _genteel_ in their gabble, nor truly smart in their repartee.

_Lord Sparkish._ And they cannot _badiner_ a bit.

_Lady Smart._ Like that _dear Bellamour!_

_Miss Notable._ Or that _delightful Lovelace!_

_Lady Smart._ Modern dialogues are _dull!_

_Mr. Neverout._ If our dear Dean, now, could furnish them with a fresh supply of those entertaining and improving "polite questions, answers, repartees, replies, and rejoinders," such as he took thirty years in collecting, there might be a chance for them.

_Lord Sparkish._ Or if we could send them some really modish dialogues from the shades!

_Lady Sparkish._ Faith, suppose we send 'em _this!_

_Miss Notable._ Ah, do let's!!!