to the stern rebuke of a formidable headmaster!

"Toby M.P.," glancing down from his seat in the Press Gallery on this
rare and impressive scene, has described it in the pages of "Punch" in
characteristic fashion:--

"Thursday, _April_ 7_th_.

"The Chairman of Cambrian Railways held a special meeting at Bar. It
was attended by Mr. Bailey-Hawkins, and Mr. John Conacher, Manager of
the Company . . . The latter, resolved to sell his life dearly,
brought in his umbrella, which gave him a quite casual
hope-I-don't-intrude appearance as he stood at the Bar. Members, at
first disposed to regard the whole matter as a joke, cheered Maclure
when he came in at a half-trot; laughed when the Bar pulled out,
difficulty arose about making both ends meet . . . Bursts of laughter
and buzz of conversation in all parts of the House; general aspect
more like appearance at theatre on Boxing Night, when audience waits
for curtain to rise on new pantomime. Only the Speaker grave, even
solemn; his voice occasionally rising above the merry din with stern
cry of 'Order! Order!'

"Hicks-Beach's speech gave new and more serious turn to affairs.
Concluded with Motion declaring Directors guilty of Breach of
Privilege and sentencing them to admonition. But speech itself
clearly made out that Directors were blameless; all the bother lying
at door of Railway Servant who had been dismissed. Speech, in short,
turned its back on Resolution. This riled the Radicals; not to be
soothed even by Mr. G. interposing in favourite character as Grand
Old Pacificator. Storm raged all night; division after division
taken; finally, long past midnight, Directors again brought up to the
Bar, the worn, almost shrivelled, appearance of Conacher's umbrella
testifying to the mental suffering undergone during the seven hours
that had passed since last they stood there.

"Speaker, with awful mien and in terrible tones, 'admonished' them;
and so to bed."

The chief actors in this arresting and peculiar drama have now all past
from the stage, almost the last survivor, Mr. Hood himself, dying in
1920, after a long career of public service in the local administration
of civic affairs at Ellesmere, and not before, through the gracious good
offices of the last General Manager, Mr. Samuel Williamson, full and
formal reconciliation had taken place between him