from under silk hats of incredible glossiness. There was a
disposition to wear the hat much too forward, I thought, for a good
Parliamentary style.

There was much play with the hats all through; a tremendous
competition to get in first and put hats on coveted seats. A memory
hangs about me of the House in the early afternoon, an inhumane
desolation inhabited almost entirely by silk hats. The current use
of cards to secure seats came later. There were yards and yards of
empty green benches with hats and hats and hats distributed along
them, resolute-looking top hats, lax top hats with a kind of shadowy
grin under them, sensible top bats brim upward, and one scandalous
incontinent that had rolled from the front Opposition bench right to
the middle of the floor. A headless hat is surely the most soulless
thing in the world, far worse even than a skull. . . .

At last, in a leisurely muddled manner we got to the Address; and I
found myself packed in a dense elbowing crowd to the right of the
Speaker's chair; while the attenuated Opposition, nearly leaderless
after the massacre, tilted its brim to its nose and sprawled at its
ease amidst its empty benches.

There was a tremendous hullaboo about something, and I craned to see
over the shoulder of the man in front. ''Order, order, order!"

"What's it about?" I asked.

The man in front of me was clearly no better informed, and then I
gathered from a slightly contemptuous Scotchman beside me that it
was Chris Robinson had walked between the honourable member in