ing.

All-night sittings were far rarer at Ottawa than with us, and
constituted quite an event. Some of us went into the gallery at 5 a.m.
after a dance, to see the end of a long and stormy sitting. The House
was very uproarious. Some member had brought in a cricket-ball, and
they were throwing each other catches across the House. To the credit
of Canadian M.P.'s, I must say that we never saw a single catch missed.
When Sir John rose to close the debate, there were loud cries of, "You
have talked enough, John A. Give us a song instead." "All right," cried
Sir John, "I will give you 'God save the Queen.'" And he forthwith
started it in a lusty voice, all the members joining in. The
introduction of a cricket-ball might brighten all-night sittings in our
own Parliament, though somehow I cannot quite picture to myself Mr.
Asquith throwing catches to Sir Frederick Banbury across the floor of
the House of Commons.

I was once in the gallery of the South African Parliament at Capetown,
after the House had been sitting continuously for twenty hours. The
Speaker had had a stool brought him to rest his legs on, and was fast
asleep in his chair, with his wig all awry. Dutch farmer members from
the Back-Veld were stretched out at full length on the benches in the
lobbies, snoring loudly; in fact, the whole place was a sort of
Parliamentary Pullman Sleeping-car. That splendid man, the late General
Botha, told me that late hours in Parliament upset him terribly, as he
had been used all his life to going early to bed. Though the exterior
of the Capetown Parliament buildings is nothing very wonderful
architecturally, the interior is very handsome, and quite surprisingly
spacious.

The Governor-General gave two evening skating and tobaggoning parties
at Rideau Hall every winter. He termed these gatherings his "Arctic
Cremornes," after the then recently defunct gardens in London, and the
parties were wonderfully picturesque. In those days, though the fashion
now has quite disappeared, all members of snow-shoe and tobogganing
clubs, men and women alike, wore coloured blanket-suits consisting of
knickerbockers and long coats, with bright-coloured stockings, sash,
and knitted toque (invariably pronounced "tuke"). The club colours of
course varied. Rideau Hall was white with purple stockings and "tuke,"
and red sash. Others were sky-blue, with scarlet stockings and "tuke,"
or crimson and black, or brown and green. A collection of three hu