so good that Mr. Crewe regretted (undoubtedly for the
editor's sake) that a request could not be appended to it such as is used
upon marriage and funeral notices: "New York, Boston, and Philadelphia
papers please copy."

Mr. Crewe thought it his duty to remedy as much as possible the
unfortunate limited circulation of the article, and he spent as much as a
whole day making out a list of friends and acquaintances whom he thought
worthy to receive a copy of the Tribune--marked personal. Victoria Flint
got one, and read it to her father at the breakfast table. (Mr. Flint did
not open his.) Austen Vane wondered why any man in his obscure and
helpless position should have been honoured, but honoured he was. He sent
his to Victoria, too, and was surprised to find that she knew his
handwriting and wrote him a letter to thank him for it: a letter which
provoked on his part much laughter, and elements of other sensations
which, according to Charles Reade, should form the ingredients of a good
novel. But of this matter later.

Mrs. Pomfret and Alice each got one, and each wrote Mr. Crewe appropriate
congratulations. (Alice's answer supervised.) Mrs. Chillingham got one;
the Honourable Hilary Vane got one--marked in red ink, lest he should
have skipped it in his daily perusal of the paper. Mr. Brush, Bascom got
one likewise. But the list of Mr. Crewe's acquaintances is too long and
too broad to dwell upon further in these pages.

The Monday-night session came at last, that sensational hour when the
Speaker makes those decisions to which he is supposed to have given birth
over Sunday in the seclusion of his country home at Hale. Monday-night
sessions are, as a rule, confined in attendance to the Honourable Brush
Bascom and Mr. Ridout and a few other conscientious members who do not
believe in cheating the State, but to-night all is bustle and confusion,
and at least four hundred members are pushing down the aisles and
squeezing past each other into the narrow seats, and reading the State
Tribune or the ringing words of the governor's inaugural which they find
in the racks on the back of the seats before them. Speaker Doby, who has
been apparently deep in conference with the most important members (among
them Mr. Crewe, to whom he has whispered that a violent snow-storm is
raging in Hale), raps for order; and after a few preliminaries hands to
Mr. Utter, the clerk, amidst a breathless silence, the paper on which the
parliamentary