"If the Bill becomes an Act it will be born with a rope round its neck."--_Mr. WILLIAM O'BRIEN._
PRIME MINISTER, amid constant interruption from benches opposite, made short reply. Curtain about to fall as directed when WILLIAM O'BRIEN hurried to front of stage. Reasonably expected that, having through forty years made strenuous fight for Home Rule, he was now about to sing a pæan suitable to eve of final victory. On the contrary what he wished to remark, and like the Heathen Chinee his language was plain, was that, "If the Bill becomes an Act it will be born with a rope round its neck."
Home Rule for Ireland all very well. But not Home Rule _cum_ JOHN REDMOND and _sine_ WILLIAM O'BRIEN.
House listened with impatience to this tirade, calling again and again for the division. When it was taken it appeared that 351 voted for Third Reading and 274 against, a majority of 77. Redmondites leaped to their feet and wildly cheered. Ministerialists did not respond to enthusiastic outburst. They were dumbly glad that a measure wrangled over for three sessions was out of the way at last, leaving behind, it is true, the shadow of an Amending Bill.
_Business done._--Both Houses adjourn for Whitsun recess. Commons resume 9th of June; Lords six days later.
From an advertising tailor's guarantee:--
"If the smallest hole appears after six months' wear, we will make another absolutely free."
It is a very kind offer, but we would always rather find somebody who would mend the first hole.
"It is an interesting fact that Mr. Gidney (Marlborough) went round the course in, approximately, 97, which is, we understand, a record for the Hungerford course, the bogey for which is 82."
Somebody must have done it in more than this. Personally we are always good for a century.
When Mr. Walford Sploshington bought Hydra House we all hoped that beyond papering and painting, dabbing on a bit of plaster where it was needed, and grubbing the groundsel in the drive, he would allow it to remain in the state of old-world picturesqueness in which he had found it. We would not have objected even if he had decided on having water laid on; although this would be getting dangerously near our limit, as there was a dear old draw-well in the garden and one in the ripping old courtyard. We were justly proud of the fact of Hydra House being the finest and purest example of Tudor architecture in our corner of England. When I say "we" I mean the Weatherspoons, the Malcomson-Pagets, Gaddingham, and one or two others, and myself. It was as near to being a mansion as it is reasonable to expect a house to be without its being actually a mansion; and there was a romance in its very name that compelled our reverence. The first owner--the ancestor in a direct line of the gentleman who, because of the increased cost of petrol combined with the Undeveloped Land Tax, was obliged to sell it to Mr. Walford Sploshington, the highest bidder--was one of those fine fellows who in the spacious days of ELIZABETH did so much towards making England what she is to-day, or rather what she was until the General Election of 1906. On one of his voyages of adventure he visited the Hydra Islands, in the Gulf of Ægina, where he became enamoured of the daughter of a vineyard proprietor. As she heartily reciprocated his affection, he married her, and, bringing her home to England, installed her as mistress of a brand-new home presented to him by a grateful Queen and country. Given a similar set of circumstances, ninety-nine out of any hundred newly-married men would have done as he did, and called it Hydra House.