EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF TOBY, M.P.
House of Commons, Monday, May 23.—REDMOND, Junior, said really funny thing just now. Rising to take part in resumed Debate on Irish Local Government Bill, he announced in loud angry tone that it would be waste of time to discuss a Bill the Government evidently did not intend to press through this Session, and he for one would be no party to such a farce. Then he went on to talk for half an hour.
Debate on the whole something better than last week's contribution. O'BRIEN delivered himself of glowing denunciation full of felicitous phrases, all got through in half an hour. CHAMBERLAIN followed; has not yet got over startling novelty of his interposition in Debate being welcomed by loud cheers from Conservatives; thinks of old Aston-Park days, when the cheering was, as WEBSTER (not Attorney-General) says, "on the other boot." Now, when JOSEPH gets up to demolish his Brethren sitting near, Conservatives opposite settle themselves down with the peculiar rustling motion with which a congregation in crowded church or chapel arrange themselves to listen to a favourite preacher. Pretty to watch them as CHAMBERLAIN goes forward with his speech, delighting them with surprise to find how much better is their position than they thought when it was recommended or extolled from their own side. JOSEPH not nearly so acrimonious to-night as sometimes. Still, as usual, his speech chiefly directed to his former Brethren who sit attentive, thinking occasionally with regret of the fatal shallowness of the pit, and the absence of arrangement for hermetically sealing it. If only—But that is another story. COURTNEY at end of Bench is thinking of still another, which has the rare charm of being true. It befel at a quiet dinner where JOSEPH, finding himself in contiguity with Chairman of Committees, took opportunity of rebuking him for his alleged laxity in repressing disorder.
"I should like to know," he asked, "whether, supposing I were to fire a pistol across the House, you would call it a breach of order."
"I don't think, CHAMBERLAIN," said Prince ARTHUR, who was sitting at the other side of the table, "that if you were going to fire a pistol in the Commons, you would point it across the House." TIM HEALY just back from Dublin, where he's been appearing in his favourite character of pacificator; followed CHAMBERLAIN, and later came SAUNDERSON. But even he suffered from prevailing tone of dulness, and WILFRID LAWSON, fast asleep in the corner by Cross Benches, did not miss much. Business done.—More talk on Local Government Bill.
Tuesday.—If anyone looking on at House of Commons at three o'clock this afternoon had predicted that within an hour it would be teeming with life, brimming over with human interest, he would have been looked upon with cold suspicion. NOLAN had taken the floor, and was understood to be expressing his deliberate opinion on merits of Irish Local Government Bill. He was certainly saying something, but what it might be no man could tell. LYON PLAYFAIR, who is up in all kinds of statistics, tells me 120 words per minute is the average utterance of articulate speech. NOLAN was doing his 300, and sometimes exceeded that rate. Not a comma in a column of it. A humming-top on the subject would have been precisely as instructive and convincing. Some twenty Members sat there fascinated by the performance. It was not delivered in a monotone, in which case one could have slept. NOLAN was evidently arguing in incisive manner, shirking no obstacle, avoiding no point in the Bill, or any hit made by previous speaker. His voice rose and fell with convincing modulation. He seemed to be always dropping into an aside, which led him into another, that opened a sort of Clapham Junction of converging points. One after the other, the Colonel, with full steam up, ran along; when he reached terminus of siding, racing back at sixty miles an hour; and so up and down another. Only guessed this from modulation of his voice and the intelligent nodding of the head with which he compelled the attention of ATTORNEY-GENERAL for IRELAND. For just over half an hour he kept up this pace, and, saving a trot for the avenue, fell back into his seat gasping for breath, having concluded a sentence nine hundred words long worked off in three minutes by the astonished clock.
