t that
a tree in India produces a very good imitation of red wine. It is a
nice point determining how far one is morally responsible oneself for
the unconscious falsehoods into which these people have been betrayed.
I should like to have had the advice of Mrs. Fairchild, of the
Fairchild Family upon this delicate question. I feel convinced that
that estimable lady, with her inexhaustible repertory of supplications,
would instantly have recited by heart "a prayer against the temptation
to lead others into uttering untruths unconsciously," which would have
met the situation adequately, for not once in the book, when appealed
to, did she fail to produce a lengthy and elaborately worded petition,
adapted to the most unexpected emergencies, and I feel confident that
her moral armoury would have included a prayer against tendencies to
"leg-pulling."

To return to the London of the "seventies" and "eighties" after this
brief journey to the East, nothing is more noticeable than the way
public interest in Parliamentary proceedings has vanished. When I was a
boy, all five of the great London dailies, The Times, Morning Post,
Standard, Daily Telegraph, and Daily News, published the fullest
reports of Parliamentary news, and the big provincial dailies followed
their example. Every one then seemed to follow the proceedings of
Parliament with the utmost interest; even at Harrow the elder boys read
the Parliamentary news and discussed it, and I have heard keen-witted
Lancashire artisans eagerly debating the previous night's Parliamentary
encounters. Now the most popular newspapers give the scantiest and
baldest summaries of proceedings in the House of Commons. It is an
editor's business to know the tastes of his readers; if Parliamentary
reports are reduced to a minimum, it must be because they no longer
interest the public. This, again, is quite intelligible. When I first
entered Parliament in 1885 (to which Parliament, by the way, all four
Hamilton brothers had been elected), there were commanding
personalities and great orators in the House: Mr. Gladstone, John
Bright, Joseph Chamberlain, Lord Hartington, Henry James and Randolph
Churchill. When any of these rose to speak, the House filled at once,
they were listened to with eager attention, and every word they uttered
would be read by hundreds of thousands of people next day. Nowadays
proceedings in Parliament seem to be limited to a very occasional solo
from the one star-perform