THE WANING OF FAITH.
GUARDIAN OF STATUE. "YOU WISH TO HAMMER ANOTHER NAIL INTO THE COLOSSUS OF OUR HINDENBURG?"
EX-ENTHUSIAST. "NO; I WANT MY OLD ONE BACK."
ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.
Tuesday, April 17th.—The re-opening of the House of Commons found Lord FISHER in his accustomed place over the clock. What is the lure that brings him so often to the Peers' Gallery? I think it must be his strong sense of duty. As Chairman of the Inventions Board he feels he ought to lose no opportunity of adding to his stock.
Quite the most striking feature of the afternoon was the pink shirt worn by a well-known Scottish Member, whose name I refrain from mentioning to spare him any additional blushes. It was of such an inflammatory hue that his brother-legislators at first took it for a well-developed case of measles (probably German) and sheered off accordingly. Nobody knows what caused him to indulge in the rash act, but it is hoped in the interests of coherent debate that he will not do it again.
Mr. DILLON was so much disturbed by the apparition that, having started out to demand an immediate General Election unless the Government at once granted Home Rule to the whole of Ireland, he finished by declaring that he would be satisfied if they would promise to reform the franchise on the lines proposed by the SPEAKER'S Conference. Incidentally he drew a fancy picture of himself and his colleagues striving consistently for thirty-five years to convert their brother-Irishmen to constitutional methods; from which I infer that Mr. DILLON, very wisely, does not make a study of his own old speeches.
