ove artistic ties
and tweed jackets, suddenly met one, staring with the stern gaze of
self-consciousness, from under silk hats of incredible glossiness. There
was a disposition to wear the hat much too forward, I thought, for a
good Parliamentary style.

There was much play with the hats all through; a tremendous competition
to get in first and put hats on coveted seats. A memory hangs about me
of the House in the early afternoon, an inhumane desolation inhabited
almost entirely by silk hats. The current use of cards to secure seats
came later. There were yards and yards of empty green benches with hats
and hats and hats distributed along them, resolute-looking top hats, lax
top hats with a kind of shadowy grin under them, sensible top bats brim
upward, and one scandalous incontinent that had rolled from the front
Opposition bench right to the middle of the floor. A headless hat is
surely the most soulless thing in the world, far worse even than a
skull....

At last, in a leisurely muddled manner we got to the Address; and
I found myself packed in a dense elbowing crowd to the right of the
Speaker's chair; while the attenuated Opposition, nearly leaderless
after the massacre, tilted its brim to its nose and sprawled at its ease
amidst its empty benches.

There was a tremendous hullaboo about something, and I craned to see
over the shoulder of the man in front. "Order, order, order!"

"What's it about?" I asked.

The man in front of me was clearly no better informed, and then I
gathered from a slightly contemptuous Scotchman beside me that it was
Chris Robinson had walked between the honourable member in possession
of the house and the Speaker. I caught a glimpse of him blushingly
whispering about his misadventure to a colleague. He was just that
same little figure I had once assisted to entertain at Cambridge, but
grey-haired now, and still it seemed with the same knitted muffler
he had discarded for a reckless half-hour while he talked to us in
Hatherleigh's rooms.

It dawned upon me that I wasn't particularly wanted in the House, and
that I should get all I needed of the opening speeches next day from the
TIMES.

I made my way out and was presently walking rather aimlessly through the
outer lobby.

I caught myself regarding the shadow that spread itself out before me,
multiplied itself in blue tints of various intensity, shuffled itself
like a pack of cards under the many lights, the square shoulders, the