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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