The room is very hot; dinners have been going on in it for the last two hours; the [Greek:  knise]—­the odour of roast meat, which the gods loved, but which most men dislike—­pervades the atmosphere; your next-door neighbour is eating a rather high grouse while you are at your apple-tart, or the perfumes of a deliquescent Camembert mingle with your coffee.  As to beverages, you may, if you choose, follow the example of Lord Cross, who, when he was Sir Richard, drank beer in its native pewter, or of Mr. Radcliffe Cooke, who tries to popularize cider; or you may venture on that thickest, blackest, and most potent of vintages which a few years back still went by the name of “Mr. Disraeli’s port.”  But as a rule these heroic draughts are eschewed by the modern Minister.  Perhaps, if he is in good spirits after making a successful speech or fighting his Estimates through Committee, he will indulge himself with an imperial pint of champagne; but more often a whiskey-and-soda or a half-bottle of Zeltinger quenches his modest thirst.

On Wednesday and Saturday our Minister, if he is not out of London, probably dines at a large dinner-party.  Once a session he must dine in full dress with the Speaker; once he must dine at, or give, a full-dress dinner “to celebrate her Majesty’s Birthday.”  On the eve of the meeting of Parliament he must dine again in full dress with the Leader of the House, to hear the rehearsal of the “gracious Speech from the Throne.”  But, as a rule, his fate on Wednesday and Saturday is a ceremonious banquet at a colleague’s house, and a party strictly political—­perhaps the Prime Minister as the main attraction, reinforced by Lord and Lady Decimus Tite-Barnacle, Mr. and Mrs. Stiltstalking, Sir John Taper, and young Mr. Tadpole.  A political dinner of thirty colleagues, male and female, in the dog-days is only a shade less intolerable than the greasy rations and mephitic vapours of the House of Commons’ dining-room.

At the political dinner “shop” is the order of the day.  Conversation turns on Brown’s successful speech, Jones’s palpable falling-off, Robinson’s chance of office, the explanation of a recent by-election, or the prospects of an impending division.  And, to fill the cup of boredom to the brim, the political dinner is usually followed by a political evening-party.  On Saturday the Minister probably does two hours’ work at his office and has some boxes sent to his house, but the afternoon he spends in cycling, or golfing, or riding, or boating, or he leaves London till Monday morning.  On Wednesday he is at the House till six, and then escapes for a breath of air before dinner.  But on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, as a rule, he is at the House from its meeting at three till it adjourns at any hour after midnight.  After dinner he smokes and reads and tries to work in his room, and goes to sleep and wakes again, and towards midnight is unnaturally lively.  Outsiders believe in the “twelve o’clock rule,” but insiders know that, as a matter of fact, it is suspended as often as an Irish member in the ’80 Parliament.  Whoever else slopes homewards, the Government must stay.  Before now a Minister has been fetched out of his bed, to which he had surreptitiously retired, by a messenger in a hansom, and taken back to the House to defend his Estimates at three in the morning.