Will you please send me a fountain pen because nearly every boy but me has a fountain pen and I should so like to have one because I often want to write something outside and I carn’t and then when I come in I don’t no what it is and I miss something out of my letter then when I have writen my letter I remember what it was and genulry I remember it in lesons and when I begin to write my next letter I have for goten it and it goes on like that till at last I remember it and then some times I don’t rember it all and that is why I want a fontin pen.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  “DRY” HUMOUR.

PRESIDENT WILSON.  “OUR FUTURE LIES UPON THE WATER!”

BRITANNIA.  “ALLUDING, I PRESUME, TO YOUR PROHIBITION MOVEMENT?”]

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[Illustration:  ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

MR. LOWTHER TAKES THE CHAIR FOR “POSITIVELY THE LAST TIME.”  HIS
ENTHUSIASTIC PROPOSER AND SECONDER (COLONEL MILDMAY AND SIR HENRY
DALZIEL), BITTEN BY THE POPULAR CRAZE, PUT A BIT OF “JAZZ” INTO THE
PROCEEDINGS.]

Tuesday, February 4th.—­There is much virtue in horsehair.  Few who attended the informal opening of the Third Parliament of KING GEORGE THE FIFTH would have guessed that under the full-bottomed wig and gorgeous black-and-gold robes of the dignified figure on the Woolsack lay the volatile personality of “F.  E.”  He played his new part nobly.  A trifling error in the setting of his three-cornered hat, whose rakish cock was for the moment reminiscent of the “Galloper,” was quickly corrected on the advice of one of the Lords Commissioners at his side; and by the time the faithful Commons were admitted to hear the Commission read there was nothing to differentiate Lord BIRKENHEAD (as he had now become) from any previous occupant of his exalted position.  Nor was there any lack of dignity in his delivery of the instructions to the Commons to “proceed to the choice of some proper person to be your Speaker”—­though I fancy that when he bade them “repair to the place where you are to sit” he must have been tempted to add the words, “provided that you can find room there.”

For the Lower House, when we returned there, was a seething mass of humanity.  How many of the 707 duly elected Members were present I know not; but there were enough to swamp the floor and surge over into the Galleries.  Seeing that the “Tubes” were closed and taxis few and far between, some of them were obliged to resort to unusual methods of locomotion.  Sir HENRY NORMAN surprised the police in Palace Yard by arriving on a motor-scooter, and there is an unconfirmed rumour that the Editor of John Bull made his rentree to the House in a flying-boat drawn by four canards sauvages. Anyhow, there they were, so thick and slab that Mr. DE VALERA, who was reported to have escaped from durance vile with the intention of presenting himself at the House and creating a disturbance, would have found it impossible to gain entry unless preceded by a charge of gelignite.  As it was, none of the Sinn Feiners was present, nor indeed any representative of Irish Nationalism at all, and the proceedings were as orderly as a Quaker funeral.