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Have spoken at three meetings since the Mass Meeting.  Tolland said, “You needn’t refer to Sir Thomas CHUBSON yourself.  Leave our people to do that.  They enjoy that kind of thing, and know how to do it.”  They do, indeed.  At our last meeting, HOLLEBONE, the Secretary of the Junior Conservative Club, went on at him for twenty minutes in proposing resolution of confidence in me.  “Sir Thomas,” he said, “talks of his pledges.  The less Sir Thomas says about them the better.  I can’t walk out anywhere in Billsbury for two minutes without tripping over the broken fragments of some of Sir THOMAS’s pledges.  It’s getting quite dangerous.  Sir Thomas, they say, made himself.  It’s a pity he couldn’t put in a little consistency when he was engaged on the job.  We don’t want any purse-proud Radical knights to represent us.  We want a straightforward man, who says what he means; and you’ll agree with me, fellow-townsmen, that we’ve got one in our eloquent and popular young Candidate.”

This went down very well.  Next day, however, the Meteor “parallel-columned” Sir Thomas CHUBSON’s career and mine.  Mine occupied six lines; Sir THOMAS’s “Life of honourable and self-sacrificing industry” ran to nearly a column.  “It will be observed,” said the Meteor, “that there is a good deal of blank space in Mr. PATTLE’s comparative career; but this no doubt recommends him to his Conservative friends, who are quite equal to filling it brilliantly with their imaginative rhetoric about his chances of success.”

Primrose Day, the day after to-morrow.  We’re going to have a great demonstration at Billsbury.  Mother is going down with me to-morrow.

April 20th, “George Hotel,” Billsbury.—­The Demonstration yesterday was a splendid success.  At ten o’clock in the morning the Conservative Band marched up to the Hotel and played patriotic airs under the window.  Mother and I drove to the Beaconsfield Club in an open carriage and pair, escorted by the band.  Mother’s bonnet was all primroses, and she carried an immense bouquet of them. Carlo came with us and sat on the back-seat.  His collar was stuck full of primroses, and small bunches were tied on to the tufts on his back and at the end of his tail.  I wore a buttonhole of primroses, and carried a huge primrose wreath to be placed round the bust of lord Beaconsfield, which stands in the hall of the Club.  The coachman and horses too were all tricked out with bunches.  Tolland and CHORKLE, and all the leaders of the Party, met us at the entrance of the Club, and the ceremony of depositing the flowers all round the bust began.  CHORKLE, who once shook hands with dizzy in the lobby of the House, made a great speech, mostly composed of personal reminiscences of our great departed leader. (By the way CHORKLE has six children, five of them being sons, whose names are Benjamin Disraeli