From the first moment that he gets a post-card informing him he is to be proposed to the House for the vacant Chair, the Speaker-designate gives up the sports of the field, dinner company, and all other pleasures and amusements, and devotes himself, night and day, to the perusal of the journals of the House of Commons, the investigation of the Standing Orders, and the study of the Constitutional History of England, Parliamentary precedents and privileges, and the Biographies of his predecessors.
He reads a fixed portion of Hansard every morning and evening.
He sees no one but the Clerk of the House and his Assistants, who call to give him daily private tuition.
He forms a collection of the photographs of all the Members, that his recognition of them may be immediate and unerring.
During the week before the meeting of Parliament he visits all his old haunts for the last time, and takes leave of his friends, with whom, of course, as First Commoner, he can never again mix on the same familiar terms.
The day before his election he has his hair cut.
On the eve of the great event he retires to rest early, and on the morning of the most momentous day in his life he rises with the first streak of dawn in the east, and paces to and fro on Constitution Hill, to collect his thoughts and prepare his speech.
The Sergeant-at-Arms conveys him, attired in a full Court suit to Westminster, in a close carriage, with the blinds drawn down, and remains with him in a vault in the Victoria Tower, where he is provided with the daily papers, writing materials, and refreshments, until his proposer and seconder arrive to conduct him into the House. (There is a large looking-glass in the vault, before which he tries on his wig and gown, with the experienced aid of the Sergeant.)
The subsequent proceedings are pretty much as the papers have described them, except that the Proposer and Seconder wear nosegays, and carry halberds; and that the Speaker stands up before he takes his seat in the chair, which is draped with the Union Jack, brandishes the Mace (decked with ribbons for the occasion) three times round his head, and in a loud voice, and in Norman French, invites the whole of the officers of the House to dine with him that evening at the Albion at seven.