ame in on all fours with his little child pulling his
coat-tails and whacking him with a stick, or if Sir William Harcourt
played at leapfrog with Lulu round the Speaker's chair?

[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.]

My drawing will show you better what the House of Representatives is
like than any written description I can give. Each Member has his own
desk, with his Parliamentary papers all around him. He is not bothered,
as Members are in England, by having his papers sent to his private
house, or having to call for them at the office when he arrives, or
actually having to fight for a seat. Americans pay their
Representatives, and consider that they too have a right to be
accommodated with a seat whenever they want one to see them, and to know
who they are; so you have in front of you a diagram of the sitting
arrangements of the House, with the names of the Members.

[Illustration: AN EX-SPEAKER.]

At 12 o'clock the procession enters. An official carries a little wand
with the eagle on top, and after the Chaplain (during my first visit I
saw the "Blind Chaplain," the Rev. W. H. Milburn) has delivered a few
touching words about the floods in Minnesota, the reading of the
"reakard" begins. The House buzzes with conversation and displays the
utmost indifference while the minutes of the last meeting are read with
extraordinary rapidity by a clerk with a grating voice. Every now and
then a Member corrects a misprint in the "reakard" of what he has said,
and then leave of absence is given to applicants for it, who have to
state their reasons. The Chairmen of the various Committees then report
to the House, Chairmen of Committees taking in turn to sit in the
Speaker's Chair and preside over the House, whilst anyone can examine
them.

Instead of calling out a Member by his name--Mr. Bacon or Mr. Beans--the
Speaker calls upon "the gentleman from Illinois," or "the gentleman from
Michigan." But if any question arises to which some Member has an
objection filibustering is rampant. The Speaker rises and asks if there
is any objection to the consideration of the Bill. After a pause he
says, "The Chair hears none," and is about ordering the Bill to be
engrossed when some Member objects and a division is taken, the Members
standing up to be counted. Groups of them, however, do not pay a bit of
attention, and sit about on their desks smoking cigars and telling
stories, and when the numbers are given some of these will