ng votes from one candidate to another in packets of
not less than one hundred. That's easy, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes," I said, "that's quite easy."

"Very well then," he said. "You have now got two candidates elected, A. and
B. You take from them 653 votes, which do not legitimately belong to them,
and you mix them up with the surplus votes of the remaining eight
candidates. Unless C. is a congenital idiot, or a felon, or otherwise
incapacitated, he will then be found to have 4,129 votes, and he too will
be elected. For the last place you must proceed on a basis of geometrical
progression. There are still seven candidates, but four of these have no
earthly and must be withdrawn by a writ of _Ne exeat regno_, taking with
them the 2,573 votes which are properly or improperly theirs, and leaving
3,326 votes to be added to those already recorded for D., who, being thus
elected into the position of fourth letter of the alphabet, will be
returned as elected on the Temperance and Vegetarian ticket. So finally you
get your members duly elected without the blighting interference of the
Caucus and the party wire-pullers generally. You see that, of course?"

"Yes," I said, "I suppose I see it."

"Of course you do, and the others will see it too. And they'll realise that
the House of Commons will be a different place when the old system is
destroyed and every shade of opinion is represented. But what chiefly
appeals to me in it is its extraordinary simplicity and perspicuous ease. A
child could perform the duties of counter or returning officer, and any
voter, male or female, can master the system in about five minutes."

I thanked Mr. WELLS for his courtesy and staggered dizzily back to Bouverie
Street.

* * * * *

On "How to Dig," from a recently-published military manual:--

"To dig well one must dig often. Any series of complex co-ordinated
movements can be performed with the greatest economy of effort only
when they have become semi-reflex; and for this to happen the
correlated series of nervous impulses must be linked up by higher
development of the brain cells."

A spade is useful, too.

* * * * *

"I did not hear yesterday of the insufficiency of bread supplied at
Restaurants being made up by cakes and guns brought from home."--_Irish
Paper._

We have heard, however, of an insufficiency of alcoholic refreshment being
mad