ations
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 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 contai