not respond to enthusiastic
outburst. They were dumbly glad that a measure wrangled over for three
sessions was out of the way at last, leaving behind, it is true, the
shadow of an Amending Bill.

_Business done._--Both Houses adjourn for Whitsun recess. Commons resume
9th of June; Lords six days later.

* * * * *

From an advertising tailor's guarantee:--

"If the smallest hole appears after six months' wear, we will make
another absolutely free."

It is a very kind offer, but we would always rather find somebody who
would mend the first hole.

* * * * *

"It is an interesting fact that Mr. Gidney (Marlborough) went round the
course in, approximately, 97, which is, we understand, a record for the
Hungerford course, the bogey for which is 82."

_Marlborough Times._

Somebody must have done it in more than this. Personally we are always
good for a century.

* * * * *

THE MOUSE OF MYDRA.

When Mr. Walford Sploshington bought Hydra House we all hoped that
beyond papering and painting, dabbing on a bit of plaster where it was
needed, and grubbing the groundsel in the drive, he would allow it to
remain in the state of old-world picturesqueness in which he had found
it. We would not have objected even if he had decided on having water
laid on; although this would be getting dangerously near our limit, as
there was a dear old draw-well in the garden and one in the ripping old
courtyard. We were justly proud of the fact of Hydra House being the
finest and purest example of Tudor architecture in our corner of
England. When I say "we" I mean the Weatherspoons, the Malcomson-Pagets,
Gaddingham, and one or two others, and myself. It was as near to being a
mansion as it is reasonable to expect a house to be without its being
actually a mansion; and there was a romance in its very name that
compelled our reverence. The first owner--the ancestor in a direct line
of the gentleman who, because of the increased cost of petrol combined
with the Undeveloped Land Tax, was obliged to sell it to Mr. Walford
Sploshington, the highest bidder--was one of those fine fellows who in
the spacious days of ELIZABETH did so much towards making England what
she is to-day, or rather what she was until the General Election of
1906. On one of his voyages of adventure he visited the Hydra Islands,
in the Gulf of AEgina, where he