Saturday.—­Session suddenly collapsed.  “Like over-ripe tree,” says Prince ARTHUR, dropping into poetry, “the fruit has fallen in a night.”  Benches nearly empty; Votes passing in basketsful; prorogue next week; to-day, practically, last working time.  OLD MORALITY just come in, in serge suit; left his straw hat in his room; off shortly on cruise in Pandora; already shipped store of nautical phrases.  Putting his open hand to the side of his mouth, he (when GEORGE CAMPBELL was making one of his last speeches), shouted out, “Belay there!” SPEAKER pointed out that this was not Parliamentary phrase.  If Right Hon. Gentleman wanted to move the Closure, he should do so in the form provided.  OLD MORALITY, standing up, hitching his trousers at the belt, scraping his right foot behind him, and pulling his forelock, retorted—­

“I ask your honour’s pardon; but these lubbers are so long-winded.”  “Order!  Order!” said SPEAKER.

Said good-bye, wishing him luck on the voyage; at parting pressed on my acceptance a little book; found it a copy of the Golden Treasury Edition of Sir THOMAS BROWN’S Religio Medici; page 167 turned down; passage marked; read these words:—­

“Though vicious times invert the opinions of things and set up a new ethics against virtue, yet hold thou fast to OLD MORALITY.”

“I will,” I said; and pressing his hand sheered off.

Business done.—­All.

* * * * *

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

INVALID TOURING OPPORTUNITY.—­Your idea of personally conducting a party of paralytics, cripples, and other helpless invalids on a “flying Continental trip,” in which you propose including visits to all the recognised “Cures,” either by baths or drinking waters in Europe, strikes us as quite admirable, and the further advantages you offer in the shape of your being accompanied by six Bath-chairs, a donkey, a massage doctor, a galvanising machine, fire-escape, and a hearse, seem to meet the demands of the most nervous and exacting patients more than half way.  Your provision, too, for the recreation of your party—­such an important consideration where the nerves have been shattered and the health feeble—­by the engagement of a Learned Musical and Calculating Pig, and a couple of Ethiopian Pashas, who can munch and swallow half-a-dozen wine-glasses, and, if requested, remove their eye-balls, seems to offer a prospect of many an evening’s startling and even boisterous amusement; and if the Pig should have been palmed off on you by fraud, you not having found it able to “calculate” at all, or even select with its snout a number not previously fastened to a piece of onion, though assisted in its selection, according to the directions, “with a smart prod with a carving-fork,” there still, as you truly say, remains the alternative of disposing of it advantageously to some German sausage-maker.  As to the Ethiopian Pashas, if their feats, as is just possible, shock and horrify, rather than divert and amuse your invalid audience, you can, as you suggest, easily leave them behind on your way, in settlement of one of your largest hotel bills.  Let us know when you start.  Your “half-dozen paralytics” being let down in a horse-box by a crane on to the boat, ought to create quite a sensation, and we shall certainly be on the look-out for it.