That Very Mab

by May Kendall; Andrew Lang

'That won't do,' replied the Democrat roughly, as he pocketed the coin. 'Do you suppose that you are going to feed thousands of starving men, women, and children on a threepenny bit?'

'I deeply sympathise,' said the Cabinet Minister, without any distinct impression that he was quoting from 'Alice in Wonderland.' 'In fact, I may say that I weep for you; but what can I do? Am I not with you? Don't I hate criticism, and political economy, and Mr. Goschen?'

'You must act, returned the Democrat impressively. 'You are in the Government; 'and there came from the mob a hoarse, funereal echo, 'You are in the—qualified—Government!'

'Ah, but I am not in that department,' said the Minister, seeing a way of escape. 'My friends—I may say, indeed, my suffering fellow-citizens—be reasonable. Don't be vexed with me. I am only a capitalist, a toiler and spinner. Go for dukes and earls, or better—exercise patience. "The night," says the poet, "is always darkest just before the dawn." I am not in that department.'

'Hang your departments!' said the Democrat. 'If you are not in that department, at least you might be expected to know where it is, and to tell it what to do. Who would give a farthing for departments and officials who can't join hands at a time like this, to help their starving countrymen? We shan't stop to quarrel with you how you do it, if you only lift us out of the mire. Here are these men'—he pointed to the mob, and the mob hurrahed—'willing to work, eager to work, perishing for want of food, and not a soul of your benevolent Governments will lift a finger to set them to work for it. Give them public buildings to erect and to be blown up, canals to make, railways to cut; assist them to emigrate, if you have nothing for them to do at home, but in Heaven's name be sharp about it!'

'It is really very awkward,' said the Cabinet Minister. 'You see I am not in the Railroad Department, nor in the Canal Department, nor in the Emigration Department. I am sure you see that!' he continued hopefully, looking round upon the crowd, who, though they admitted the fact, did not appear to appreciate its deep and intrinsic force. 'But I am quite willing at some future opportunity—indeed, I may say I hope at some opportunity comparatively not distant, to consider the advisability of representing the matter to the heads of certain departments who might be able, in the course of the next but one Septennial Parliament, or' (even more sanguinely) 'I might under favourable circumstances even hope to say, the next Septennial Parliament, to lay the topic before the Government. In the meantime, my friends, consider that such means as you have suggested for alleviating the hardships with which I so profoundly sympathise are not things to be lightly rushed into. You will agree with me doubtless. You will show that fine sense of the propriety of your lots innate in the breast of every Briton, by agreeing with me that canals, for instance, are not things to be lightly rushed into. Emigration, my friends, is not a thing to be lightly rushed into. In the meantime, knowledge, as the good old maxim tells us, never comes amiss, and whatever be the eventual scheme resolved upon by Government for relieving your necessities, you cannot better employ your leisure than in preparatory academic study of the arts of building, railway cutting, and canal-making, and in acquainting yourselves with the principles and methods of emigration, the nature of our different colonial settlements, their situation and productions, during the seven years that must inevitably elapse—'

He would have proceeded, but a howl, long and loud, drowned his utterance, and the mob surged forward, driving him back, in a state of bewildered astonishment, into the premises of a fashionable dealer. Various tokens of regard followed him in the shape of rotten eggs and cabbage leaves, which, as the Owl observed in a thoughtful voice, were doubtless symbolical.

Then the mob broke up and went on its different ways. Mab and the Owl, following one of its scattered detachments, met another procession, with a drum and trumpets and other instruments, all working their hardest at one of Sankey and Moody's hymns, which procession drew up straightway before the remnant of the mob, and began to convert it.

'What is this?' asked Queen Mab. 'Is it British Polynesians going to a war-dance?'

'No,' replied the Owl. 'It is only the Salvation Army, walking backwards into glory.'