rer, the player of the
confidence trick or the three-card trick, the robber of the widow and
the orphan. Be smooth-tongued, and the Englishman will withdraw from
you as quickly as may be, walking sideways like a crab, and looking
askance at you with panic in his eyes. But stammer and blurt to him,
and he will fall straight under the spell of your transparent honesty.
A silly superstition; but there it is, ineradicable; and through it,
undoubtedly, has come the house of Commons manner. Sometimes, through
sheer nervousness, a new member achieves something like that manner;
insomuch that his maiden speech is adjudged rich in promise, and 'the
ear of the House' is assured to him when next he rises. Then is the
dangerous time for him. He has conquered his nervousness now, but has
not yet acquired that complex and delicate technique whereby a man can
produce the illusion that he is striving hopelessly to utter something
which, really, he could say with perfect ease. Thus he forfeits the
sympathy of the House. Members stroll listlessly out. There is a buzz
of conversation along the benches--perhaps the horrific refrain ''Vide,
'Vide, 'Vide.' But the time will come when they shall hear him. Years
hence--a beacon to show the heights that can be sealed by
perseverance--he shall stand fumbling and floundering in a rapt senate.

Well! I take off my hat to virtuosity in any form. I admire
Demosthenes, for whom pebbles in the mouth were a means to the end of
oratory. I admire the Demosthenes de nos jours, for whom oratory is a
means to the end of pebbles in the mouth. But I desire that the
intelligent foreigner and the intelligent country cousin be not
disappointed when they visit the House of Commons. Hitherto, strangers
have expected to find there an exhibition of the art of speaking. That
is the fault partly of those reporters to whom I have paid a
well-deserved tribute. But it is more especially the fault of those
other 'graphic' reporters, who write their lurid impressions of the
debates. These gentlemen are most wildly misleading. I don't think they
mislead you intentionally. If a man criticises one kind of ill-done
thing exclusively, he cannot but, in course of time, lower his
standard. Seeing nothing good, he will gradually forget what goodness
is; and will accept as good that which is least bad. So it is with the
graphic reporter in Parliament. He really does imagine that Hob 'raked
the Treasury Bench with a merciless fire o