Tuesday.—OLD MORALITY walked out of House just now, his back suffused with sense of duty done, alike to QUEEN and Country. Irish Land Bill, which, as CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN says, makes a Moated Grange of House of Commons, on again all day. SAGE OF QUEEN ANNE'S GATE and his Party active as usual. The PARTY a little doubtful of the SAGE. Sometimes, in blessed intervals of silence, is discovered gazing on a bald space on back of SAGE'S head, striving, as it were, to pierce through this weak spot, and discover what is in the SAGE'S mind. The SAGE in outward manner most deferential and encouraging. Misses no opportunity of publicly applauding him. It is true that when the SAGE has got him on his legs, starting afresh on new Amendment, he seizes the opportunity to slink out of the House, and take another cigarette, quite certain that the PARTY is good for half-an-hour. This, and one or two other little things, create a suspicion in the mind of the PARTY, who was not brought up in India for nothing. WILFRID LAWSON, who sits close by, and keenly watches progress of events, says he has no doubt the time will come when the PARTY will revolt.
"KEAY," says WILFRID, "occupies a strategical position, which gives him a great pull over LABBY. His respected Leader sits on the bench immediately below him. Some day SEYMOUR KEAY'S wild Mahratta blood may boil over, an unsuspected scimitar may flash forth from his trouser pocket, and the SAGE'S head, falling gory on the floor of the House, may gently, from mere force of habit, roll in the direction of Queen Anne's Gate."
"For a real sanguinary-minded man," said RITCHIE, to whom I told this story, "give me a teetotaller."
The PARTY, with some assistance from Windbag SEXTON, wasted sitting till quarter to seven. By this time, all Amendments to Clause 3 being wearily worn off, opportunity just left to pass Clause before Sitting adjourned. Question put that Clause 3 pass. Then SAGE, smelling obtrusively of cigarettes, interposed, and declared it "would be indecent" to accept the Clause without further discussion. Nothing House shrinks from just now more abjectly than from charge of indecency. Accordingly debate stood over, and Thursday may, if the SAGE and his Party please, and the Closure is not invoked, be appropriated for further discussion of Clause 3.
OLD MORALITY might have moved Closure at twelve minutes to seven, and carried Clause 3. Committee naturally expected he would. But OLD MORALITY had another card up his sleeve. At very last moment, whilst Members trooped out, and it was thought all was over, OLD MORALITY gave notice of motion to take the whole time of House, including Tuesday and Friday nights' evening sittings.
"I think you had them there," I said, as we walked across to Grosvenor Place.
"Yes, TOBY," he said, a little flush mantling his modest face; "we've given them rope enough, and now we'll hang them. They've had their run, now we'll take ours. It's the main thing I always look to. Never forget when I was still in the seminary writing out copy of verses about a shipwreck. A graphic scene; the riven vessel, the raging seas, the panic-stricken crowd on deck, and then this little self-drawn picture of the sole survivor, the one man left to tell the story:
Some fell upon their bended knees
And others fell down fainting,
But I fell to on bread and cheese;