Northern Chieftain; makes
speech nearly two hours long, proving to empty, but interested
Benches, that never since Peninsular War had Great Britain an Army
so large or so fully equipped. When midnight struck, the few Members
present shook themselves, yawned, and went home. _Business done._--In
Committee on Army Estimates.

[Illustration: Mr. Swift MacNeill's little joke.]

_Tuesday._--Never saw in the flesh procession of Russian Convicts
starting on their journey to Siberia. Have read about it, though; have
even seen pictures thereof. The most saddening and soul-depressing
of these came back to mind just now, when PULESTON, PELLY and
BURDETT-COUTTS forlornly filed forth at command of Chairman of
Committees, amid cheers of heartless Opposition. If they'd only been
a little more ragged in appearance, and, above all, if they had been
connected by leg-chain, illusion would have been complete. Members on
Front Benches, as they passed them, wearily faring forth, could not
have resisted natural impulse to feel in their waistcoat pocket for a
kopec or two to bestow upon the unfortunates.

It was the suddenness of the sentence, the swift falling of the blow,
that made it so cruelly heavy. Last Friday these three Members had
supported a vote subsidising East Africa Co. in matter of preliminary
expenses of railway through their territory. Someone had discovered
they were pecuniarily interested in undertaking. To-day SWIFT
MACNEILL raised the question of parliamentary law in such cases. Moved
Resolution that vote of three Members be disallowed.

Nothing could exceed gentleness of MACNEILL's demeanour. Rather in
sorrow than in anger he moved in the matter, anxious, as all Irish
Members are, for purity of Parliamentary practice and sanctity of
constitutional principles. Almost blubbered in BURDETT-COUTTS's
waistcoat; embraced PELLY and PULESTON in comprehensive smile of
amity.

Encouraged by this attitude, the three Members assumed easy, almost
jaunty, manner. True, PULESTON admitted he would not have done it if
he'd thought anyone would have made a row about it--"as the little
boy said when he was being spanked for putting his fingers in the
jam-pot," observed MARJORIBANKS, _sotto voce_. BURDETT-COUTTS almost
haughty in his defiance of the descendant of the Uncle of JONATHAN
SWIFT, Dean of St. Patrick's.

PELLY pensive in manner and enigmatical in allusion; felt it
particularly hard thus to be placed in the dock, as if he w