meal. Lice, beetles and, on one occasion, a live lizard have been
found in the bags arriving from Cuba. Even with meat at its present
price, Captain BATHURST doubts whether such additions to our dietary
would be really welcome.

In the pre-historic times before August, 1914, the POSTMASTER-GENERAL
was wont to give on the Vote for his department a long and discursive
account of its multifarious activities, and to enliven the figures
with anecdotes and even with jokes. Mr. ILLINGWORTH knows a better
way. With deliberate monotony he reeled off his statistics to a
steadily diminishing audience. Only once did he evoke a sign of
animation. He has abolished the absurd rule that the person presenting
a five-pound note at a post-office should be required to endorse it;
and, in defending this momentous change, he remarked that he himself
had endorsed many such notes, "but never with my own name." For a
moment Members were startled by this cynical admission of something
which seemed to their half-awakened intelligence very like a
confession of forgery. But the POSTMASTER-GENERAL soon put them to
sleep again, and by nine o'clock had got his vote safely through.

[Illustration: COLONEL LOCKWOOD'S FAREWELL TO THE KITCHEN ON HIS
ELEVATION TO THE UPPER HOUSE.]

_Wednesday, June 6th_.--Nothing short of a revolution, it was
supposed, would cause Whitehall to empty its precious pigeon-holes,
in which so many millions of pious aspirations and abortive complaints
sleep their last sleep. But the War has penetrated even here, and Mr.
BALDWIN was able to announce, with a cheerfulness that some of the
older officials probably regard as almost indecent, that already a
vast quantity of material has gone to the pulping-mill.