sse_ expressed his
wish to become a schoolmaster, in order that he might obtain some
smattering of education, so an immoral M.P. (if any such there be)
would be the very one to stand sponsor for a Bill for the Better
Preservation of Public Morals, with a view to gaining that elementary
knowledge of morality in which his education had been defective. But
no one could have brought up some awkward case against him in the
course of a debate in the House. In the parliamentary proceedings
of Little Peddlington this might be done, but not in the House of
Commons, which, by a very polite but necessary fiction, is supposed
to be a House of Uncommons, far above the weaknesses of the ordinary
human nature of mere Constituents.

_Mr. Stoach_ (capitally played by Mr. J. VALENTINE--but everybody
plays capitally in this piece) finds _Lord Clivebrooke_ (Mr. CHARLES
WYNDHAM--admirable also) between midnight and one in the morning alone
with charming _Jessie Keber_ (Miss MARY MOORE,--delightful!) in old
_Matthew Keber's_ toy-shop, _Keber_ himself (another very clever
impersonation by Mr. W. H. DAY) having gone out on the sly to get
drunk on money supplied him by the aforesaid unscrupulous _Stoach,
M.P._ So what would have to be said in the House should amount to
this:--

_Stoach._ What! the Leader of the House bring in this Purity Bill!!
Why I saw him myself with my own eyes in a toy-shop, all among the
toys, alone at one in the morning with an attractive young person of
the female persuasion.

"Look at that now," says an Irish M.P., following the example of
_Shaun the Post_ in _The Colleen Bawn_, when the scoundrelly lawyer
brings a charge against the hero of the drama, "An' what might _you_
be doin' about there at that same time?"

Supposing, for an instant, the impossible, _Stoach_ would be called to
order, and be severely reprimanded by the SPEAKER.

Had the much-heckled and long-suffering _Clivebrooke_ been gifted by
the Author with lively ready-wit, he would have replied to his
father and supporters, who invade his room, in the pleasantest and
Charliest-Wyndhamest manner, "Yes (_lightly and airily_). What could I
be doing in a toy-shop with a young lady? Why (_still more lightly
and airily_) of course I was '_toying with her!_'" Whereupon his old
father would have been immensely tickled, and the deputation, in fits
of laughter, would have rushed back to the lobby to report "the last
good thing said by that clever chap _Clive