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s, that's clear. JOHNNY, make room for DELONCLE! He doesn't want _you_ here. France must take up her traditional _role_ (Of grabbing all she _can_ do) So, JOHNNY, my boy, don't you annoy; Make room for DELONCLE, _do_! * * * * * ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT. EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF TOBY, M.P. _House of Commons, Monday, July_ 21.--RITCHIE got another Bill through; not a measure of high imperial policy; nothing to do either with Heligoland or Zanzibar; only proposes to improve in various ways the dwellings of the industrial classes. Still, as JOKIM has shown in connection with one or two of his little Bills, it is quite possible nearly to wreck a Ministry even on matter-of-fact business arrangements. But RITCHIE isn't JOKIM, and so his Bill passes to-night, taking two steps at a time, both sides uniting in congratulation and cheers. WALTER FOSTER, rising, salutes the Minister with a quite touching bless-you-my-child attitude. FOSTER rather hints that the Bill everyone is so pleased with, is really his. True, RITCHIE'S name is on back, and he took charge of it in its passage through Committee and House. But the real man was FOSTER; his Amendments had made the Bill; he had moulded it in Committee, and now here he was to give it his blessing. Rather delicate position; sort of cracking up himself, which FOSTER would not do for the world; blushed a little, as he praised the Bill; otherwise accomplished his task with ease and grace, whilst RITCHIE, listening, twitched his eyebrows, and thought unutterable things. "I wish," said OLD MORALITY, "we had an embarrassment of RITCHIES, or even two or three more like him." OLD MORALITY been rather worried to-night; a hail-storm of questions on all sorts of subjects; amongst others, TIM HEALY and WILFRID LAWSON badgering him about the Local Taxation Bill. When is it really intended to take it? LAWSON asks OLD MORALITY back at the table again for twentieth time; literally gasping for breath; looked round House with anguished expression; then happy thought strikes him; "Mr. SPEAKER, Sir," he says, "it is really impossible to do more than one thing at a time." The pathetic earnestness with which this axiom was advanced, the sudden swift spasm of conviction that had flashed it across his mind, his certainty of the soundness of the assertion (paradoxical though it might appear), and his hasty, anxious glance below
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