They all admired this slip-slop immensely, and MARY asked me, when I called the other day, if I didn't think it wonderfully clever. I know, when I wrote my answers in her album, it took me days of thought to get them done in prose, and even then they turned out the most ordinary, commonplace things. However I thought they pleased MARY, and now POMFRET steps in with his confounded rhymes. Mrs. BELLAMY's father once published a volume of verse, and is still talked of in the household as "your grandfather the poet." She told me that she thought "a faculty for versification was the mark of a truly refined and delicate mind." Bah! POMFRET's one of the most selfish and calculating ruffians outside a convict prison, and always haggles over his luncheon bills at the Club, till the head-waiter and all the rest nearly go off their heads.
However, I had to come to Billsbury, nilly-willy. Met the Committee after dinner. They were anxious that I should do some canvassing soon, and wanted me, when next I spoke, to explain myself more fully (1) on the Temperance Question and the question of Compensation to Publicans; (2) on the Women's Suffrage Question; (3) on the Labour Question; (4) on Foreign Policy; and (5) with reference to the Billsbury Main Drainage Scheme. I said I would, but I should probably require more than one speech to do it in. Afterwards a very solemn member of the Committee, whose name I forget, got up and made a long speech, in which he observed that my habit of appearing in dress clothes at the meetings had annoyed a good many of my supporters, and that he ventured to suggest to me, for my own good, that I should wear ordinary dress. It seems a good many of the lower lot thought it looked uppish. I'm glad enough not to have to do it any more. There were other points, but I'm too tired to remember them. By the way, I have subscribed to about a dozen more Clubs and Institutions, and have promised to get Mother to open a bazaar here at the end of the month. Back to London to-morrow. What a life!
The Latest "Labor Program."
(By a New-Unionist.)
I am all for myself, and 'tis perfectly true
That the "labor" I love is regardless of "u."
But, per contra, informing my "program" you see
Though I wink (with two I's), I eliminate "me."