career of so many ambitious statesmen depends.

It is not a pleasure to record the perfidy of man, nor the lack of
judgment which prevents him, in his circumscribed lights, from
recognizing undoubted geniuses when he sees them. Perhaps it was jealousy
on General Doby's part, and a selfish desire to occupy the centre of the
stage himself, but at any rate we will pass hastily over the disagreeable
portions of this narrative. Mr. Crewe settled himself with his feet
extended, and with a complacency which he had rightly earned by leaving
no stone unturned, to listen. He sat up a little when the Appropriations
Committee, headed by the Honourable Jake Botcher, did not contain his
name--but it might have been an oversight of Mr. Utters; when the
Judiciary (Mr. Ridout's committee) was read it began to look like malice;
committee after committee was revealed, and the name of Humphrey Crewe
might not have been contained in the five hundred except as the twelfth
member of forestry, until it appeared at the top of National Affairs.
Here was a broad enough field, certainly,--the Trusts, the Tariff, the
Gold Standard, the Foreign Possessions,--and Mr. Crewe's mind began to
soar in spite of himself. Public Improvements was reached, and he
straightened. Mr. Beck, a railroad lawyer from Belfast, led it. Mr. Crewe
arose, as any man of spirit would, and walked with dignity up the aisle
and out of the house. This deliberate attempt to crush genius would
inevitably react on itself. The Honourable Hilary Vane and Mr. Flint
should be informed of it at once.

CHAPTER X

"FOR BILLS MAY COME, AND BILLS MAY GO"

A man with a sense of humour once went to the capital as a member of the
five hundred from his town, and he never went back again. One reason for
this was that he died the following year, literally, the doctors said,
from laughing too much. I know that this statement will be received
incredulously, and disputed by those who claim that laughter is a good
thing; the honourable gentleman died from too much of a good thing. He
was overpowered by having too much to laugh at, and the undiscerning
thought him a fool, and the Empire had no need of a court jester. But
many of his sayings have lived, nevertheless. He wrote a poem, said to be
a plagiarism, which contains the quotation at the beginning of this
chapter: "For bills may come, and bills may go, but I go on forever." The
first person singular is supposed to relate to the United N