In speaking of any specific social experience it is always a question
of how far one may pardonably err on the side of indiscretion; and if I
remember here a dinner in the basement of the House of Commons--in a
small room of the architectural effect of a chapel in a cathedral
crypt--it is with the sufficiently meek hope of keeping well within
bounds which only the nerves can ascertain.

The quaintness of the place may have contributed to an uncommon charm in
the occasion; but its charm was perhaps a happy accident which would
have tried in vain to repeat itself even there. It ended in a visit to
the House, where the strangers were admitted on the rigid terms and in
the strict limits to which non-members must submit themselves. But one
might well undergo much more in order to hear John Burns speak in the
place to which he has fought his right under a system of things as
averse as can be imagined to a working-man's sharing in the legislation
for working-men. The matter in hand that night chanced to be one
peculiarly interesting to a believer in the people's doing as many
things as possible for themselves, as the body politic, instead of
leaving them to a variety of bodies corporate. The steamboat service on
the Thames had grown so insufficient and so inconvenient that it was now
a question of having it performed by the London County Council, which
should be authorized to run lines of boats solely in the public
interest, and not merely for the pleasure and profit of directors and
stockholders. The monstrous proposition did not alarm those fears of
socialism which anything of the kind would have roused with us; nobody
seemed to expect that blowing up the Parliament buildings with dynamite
would be the next step towards anarchy. There was a good deal of
hear-hearing from Mr. Burns's friends, with some friendly chaffing from