Monday, August 6th.—­This being Bank Holiday and the first fine day after a week’s downpour, Members for the most part stayed away from Westminster.  Some, it is charitably supposed, have gone to look after their allotments.  Others, it is believed, have been kept away by a different reason.  The taxicab-drivers, men constitutionally averse from extortion, have refused to enter the railway-station yards so long as the companies persist in exacting from them a whole penny for the privilege.  Consequently some of our week-ending legislators are reported to be interned at Waterloo and Paddington, sitting disconsolately upon their portmanteaux.  As an appeal to the Board of Trade elicited nothing more from Mr. G. ROBERTS than a disclaimer of personal responsibility, it is expected that redress will be sought from the Taxi-cabinet.

Mr. HENDERSON’S dual personality continues to arouse curiosity.  There was some justification for Mr. KING’S inquiry whether he went to Petrograd as a Ministerial Jekyll or a Labourist Hyde.  Mr. BONAR LAW assured the House that on this occasion at least Mr. HENDERSON went purely as a Cabinet Minister, guiltless of any duplicity.

Mr. PROTHERO enlivened the discussion on the Corn Production Bill by a new clause providing that where a farmer failed to destroy the rabbits on his land the Board of Agriculture should have power to do it for him and recover the expenses incurred.  Sir JOHN SPEAR expected that in some cases the rabbits secured would more than defray the cost of the capture, and declared that unless the farmer was allowed to keep the rabbits the Government would be guilty of “profiteering.”  As other agricultural Members appeared to share this view, Mr. PROTHERO, most obliging of Ministers, agreed to alter the word “cost” to “net cost.”  I hope no litigious farmer will seek to evade his liabilities on the ground that, as the Act only says “net cost,” he need not pay for the ferrets.

Tuesday, August 7th.—­Those peers who were supposed to be shaking in their shoes at the thought of Lord SELBORNE’S impending revelations as to the means by which they acquired their honours might have spared their tremors.  He opened his bag to-day, but no cat jumped out, not even the smallest kitten.  If he had given a single concrete example of a peer who, having notoriously no public services at his back, must be presumed to have purchased his title, he would have created some effect.  But the admission that all his information on the subject was confidential cut the ground from under his feet; and needless to say none of the Peers whom he hypothetically accused of buying their coronets responded to his appeal by standing forth in a white sheet and making open confession of his crime.

[Illustration:  THE FOUNT OF HONOUR AT WORK.

LORD CURZON CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT.]