Judge (angrily, to Second Q.C.) So you! so everybody! (With maudlin tenderness.) Must respect Court! (Savagely.) You are all disgusting—disgustingly—'tosticated! Adjourn—morrow mornin'. Usher, brandy sodah! [Scene closes in—fortunately!
ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.
EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF TOBY, M.P.
House of Commons, Monday, July 27.—Quite like old times to-night. Public business interrupted, and private Member suspended. The victim is ATKINSON, Member for Boston; been on the rampage all last week; a terror to the Clerks' table; haunting the SPEAKER's Chair, and making the Sergeant-at-Arms's flesh creep. Decidedly inconvenient to have a gentleman with pale salmon neck-tie and white waistcoat, suddenly popping his head round SPEAKER's Chair, and crying, "Ah, ah!" "No, you don't!" "Would you, then?" and other discursive remarks. Curious how ATKINSON, indulging in these luxuries himself; hotly resents attempts by others to enjoy similar exotics of conversation. Narrating his grievances just now, he dwelt with especial fervour on one of them. "One of the Clerks," he told the House, "when I showed him a Motion, said, 'Oh! oh!' I said, 'Don't say "Oh! oh!" to me.'"
"Why not?" asked HANKEY, with that direct, almost abrupt manner that becomes a Magistrate for Surrey and Chairman of the Consolidated Bank. "Why not? Are you to have monopoly of this simple interjection? Are you to appropriate all the O's in the alphabet? Is not a Clerk at the Table a man and a brother, and why may he not, if the idea flashes across his active brain, say, 'Oh! oh!'?"
That rather floored ATKINSON; brought him (so to speak) to his senses. Told me afterwards he had never looked on matters in that light. Great advantage having a man like HANKEY going round prepared at moment's notice to take common-sense view of situation and depict it in terse language. Sobering effect on ATKINSON only momentary. Whilst SPEAKER was narrating circumstances on which he had based charge against him of frivolous and vexatious conduct, Member for Boston was bouncing about on seat like parched pea, shouting out, "Oh! oh!" "Ah! ah!" "No you don't!" and offering other pertinent but fragmentary remarks.
