plaster, for you'll want it after I meet ye
outside."

Mr. Labouchere and two or three Irish Members rise at once.

My neighbour sneers.

"Oh, sit down, ye rubbishy lot! Labby,--better keep yer jokes for yer
paper. Bless me if Conybeare ain't left standing! Now for an hour of
boredom."

"He _is_ a bore," I remark.

"Yes, I've stood Kenealy and Wharton, but this bore I can't. I'll chuck
it up. Kenealy did his best for the Claimant, and was amusing at times;
and Wharton,--well, he had good snuff, and his hat was a treat; but this
Conybeare is a bore and nothing else."

So he went on.

The "descendant of kings," Sir William Harcourt, rose to pulverise
Torydom and put an end to the Government and everything in general, when
the Speaker rose and said that the question before the House was whether
black sticking-plaster could be used in public hospitals.

"Oh, that's right, he wants putting down; too much of the grand Old
Bailey style. Make yer fortune in plush and knee breeches as a prize
flunkey; platform stuff won't do for us. What are you?" I feel smaller!

"_Punch._"

"You take Harcourt off with the chins?"

"Yes."

"Shake hands!"

We were friends ever afterwards.

[Illustration: "I FEEL SMALLER!"]

One day when I arrived,--actually with my Gallery ticket,-a fresh
pleasant official sat in my old friend's place, wearing his gold chain
and badge. "Should this meet the eye" of his predecessor, soliloquising
in the retirement of his suburban home, I trust it will not disturb the
serenity of his well-earned repose, for he was a capital fellow, and I
can answer for much good sense in his "official utterances."

If a politician were not a caricature by nature, I made him one. Mr.
Gladstone's collar I invented--for the same reason a journalistic friend
of mine invented Beaconsfield's champagne jelly--for "copy." When
Members suggested nothing new, I turned my attention to officials. The
Sergeant-at-Arms in that way became known as the "Black Beetle."

I watched Captain Gosset from the Press Gallery walk up the floor of the
House in court dress, his knee-breeches showing off his rather bandy
legs, elbows akimbo, and curious gait; his back view at once suggested
the beetle, and as the Black Beetle he was known. This, I was assured,
gave offence, so that I was rather anxious to see how I should be
greeted when Professor Thorold Rogers took me into the Sergeant's
presence, after I had been drawing him as the "