The seating of the senators in these two assemblages is typical of the countries they represent. In the British House of Lords the Peers loll about on scarlet sofas; in America the chosen ones sit at desks. The British Peer has forsaken one lounge to occupy another; the American has left the office desk for the desk in office. In Britain the House of Lords is composed of Princes and Peers, with an admixture of bishops, brewers, and other political party pullers; it is also an asylum for stranded political wrecks from the Lower House. Soldiers and sailors, too, are honoured and are sent there, not as politicians, but merely to exist for the time being in a sort of respectable retreat, before being translated to the crypt of Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's. John Bull has made this hereditary hotch-potch, and he must swallow it. Jonathan selects his senators to his own taste, and has them dished up fresh from time to time.
The Senate is not sombre and sedate as is our Upper House, but simplicity itself—no gilded throne, no Lord Chancellor in wig and gown, no offensive officialism. It looks like a huge auction room, the auctioneer being the deputy President standing at a table hammer in hand knocking down the separate business of State lot by lot as put up by the clerks.
The House of Representatives, like the Senate, reminds one very much of an auction room. It is a splendid hall, but its size prevents Members from being heard very distinctly, particularly as they talk away amongst themselves, except when anything particularly interesting is going on. In the Senate the table, and the clerks' table, are of dark wood; in the House of Representatives they are of white marble. The American flag hanging over the balcony gives it a semi-theatrical look, and the white marble table resembles an American bar, making one feel inclined to go up to it and order a brandy-smash, a gin-sling, or a corpse-reviver.
HE House has not met as I enter. The page-boys are playing at leapfrog, and some early Members are disposing of their correspondence, and instead of reproving the boys cast glances at them that seem to signify they would like to join in the game themselves. Presently a Member comes in backwards through one of the doorways, calling out to something that is following him. I lean over to see if he has brought his favourite dog or domestic cat, when a little infant in modernised Dutch costume comes in waddling laughingly after her parent. Another Member turns round on his swivel chair as his page-boy runs up to him, shakes him heartily by the hand, tosses him on his foot and gives him a "ride-a-cock-horse." Oh, you English sticklers for etiquette! What would you say if Mr. Labouchere came in on all fours with his little child pulling his coat-tails and whacking him with a stick, or if Sir William Harcourt played at leapfrog with Lulu round the Speaker's chair?
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
My drawing will show you better what the House of Representatives is like than any written description I can give. Each Member has his own desk, with his Parliamentary papers all around him. He is not bothered, as Members are in England, by having his papers sent to his private house, or having to call for them at the office when he arrives, or actually having to fight for a seat. Americans pay their Representatives, and consider that they too have a right to be accommodated with a seat whenever they want one to see them, and to know who they are; so you have in front of you a diagram of the sitting arrangements of the House, with the names of the Members.