ision bell and the small tea-table of the Terrace. But though woman
has many slaves she has her watchful enemies. The great order of
curmudgeon is wide and vigilant and crusty, and the curmudgeon has found
that the vast crowds of ladies who have invaded the Terrace have at last
begun to interfere with that daily constitutional along its stretching
length, which is the only exercise most members of Parliament are able
to take in these fierce days. Accordingly, there appeared an ominous
notice-board with the words, "For members only," at a particular point
in the Terrace. Within the space, before which this notice stood as a
fiery sword, woman was not allowed to intrude; and from out its sacred
enclosure--guarded by nothing but the line of the notice and the
Speaker's wrath--the confirmed bachelor, the married cynic, smoked his
cigarette, and looked lazily through at the chattering, tea-drinking,
bright-coloured crowd immediately beyond.

[Sidenote: Demos and dinner.]

I regret to say that the great Demos had an opportunity of seeing the
legislator at work and play, and that the remarks of that extremely
irreverent person were not complimentary. Reading, doubtless, in the
papers something of the fatiguing labours--of the stern attention to
business--of the long and dreary hours which the patriots of the House
of Commons were devoting to the work of the country, Demos was shocked
and scandalised to behold this giddy, fashionable, and modish crowd.
Demos, sweltering on the passing steamboat--able to see, and, at the
same time, free from interference on his watery kingdom--jeered aloud as
he passed close to the Terrace, and mocked with loud laughter that
betokened not only the vacant but the insulting mind. The skippers of
the steamboats--hardened Cockneys with an eye to business--knew what a
delight this baiting of the august assembly would be to the most
democratic and most sarcastic crowd in Europe; and accordingly it became
the "mot d'ordre" with the steamboat skipper, when the tide was full, to
bring his vessel almost to the very walls of the Terrace, and thus to
give the tripper the opportunity of gazing from very near at the lions
at food and play. If Demos could have come and seen as plainly at night
in those days as during the afternoon, his shocked feelings would have
been even more poignant and his language more irreverent. Tea is, after
all, a simple drink that makes the whole world akin; and even
strawberries i