ing the tired-out doorkeepers
and the leg-weary policemen. I really believe a swarm of wasps would not
have roused them to activity, for I noticed a bluebottle resting
undisturbed upon the nose of one of Inspector Horsley's staff. Even the
Terrace was dusty, and the Members rusty and morose. One of the Irish
Members had selected as his friend Frank Slavin, the well-known
prize-fighter, who had an admiring group round him, to whom no doubt he
was relating the history of his many plucky battles.

[Illustration: WHAT HAPPENED.]

"The stimulating effect of this may have been the cause for the assault
upon me in the Inner Lobby, which has afforded the stale House some
little excitement, which has been the salvation of the silly season. So
many papers have given startling accounts of this attack upon me, some
stating that I was caned, others that I was pummelled, shaken like a
dog, and so on, that I am glad to take the opportunity of giving a clear
statement of what really occurred. I was standing close to the doors of
the Inner Lobby, talking to Mr. Cuthbert Quilter, when Mr. Swift
MacNeill interrupted us by asking me, 'Are you the man that draws the
cartoons in _Punch_?' 'That depends upon what they are,' said I. 'I
refer to one,' said the excited Member, 'that has annoyed me very much,'
'Let me see it,' I replied. Mr. MacNeill then drew out his pocket-book
and showed me a cutting from the current number of _Punch_. 'Yes,' I
said, 'that is from a drawing of mine,' 'Then ye're a low, black-guardly
scoundrel,' melodramatically exclaimed the usually genial Member. Taking
two or three steps back, he hissed at me, with a livid face, a series of
offensive epithets too coarse for publication. Having exhausted his
vocabulary of vulgarity, a happy thought seemed to strike him. 'I want
to assault you,' he said, and forthwith he nervously and gingerly tapped
me as if he were playing with a hot coal. He then danced off to Members
who were looking on, crying, 'This is the scoundrel who has caricatured
me; witness, I assault him!' and he recommenced the tapping process
which constituted this technical assault. Knowing that Mr. MacNeill is a
very excitable subject, and at once detecting that this assault was a
'put-up job,' I was determined to remain perfectly cool; and, truth to
tell, the pirouetting of the agitated Member hugely amused me,
particularly as the more excited he became, the more he resembled the
caricature which was the ca