have at last begun to interfere with that daily constitutional along its stretching length, which is the only exercise most members of Parliament are able to take in these fierce days.  Accordingly, there appeared an ominous notice-board with the words, “For members only,” at a particular point in the Terrace.  Within the space, before which this notice stood as a fiery sword, woman was not allowed to intrude; and from out its sacred enclosure—­guarded by nothing but the line of the notice and the Speaker’s wrath—­the confirmed bachelor, the married cynic, smoked his cigarette, and looked lazily through at the chattering, tea-drinking, bright-coloured crowd immediately beyond.

[Sidenote:  Demos and dinner.]

I regret to say that the great Demos had an opportunity of seeing the legislator at work and play, and that the remarks of that extremely irreverent person were not complimentary.  Reading, doubtless, in the papers something of the fatiguing labours—­of the stern attention to business—­of the long and dreary hours which the patriots of the House of Commons were devoting to the work of the country, Demos was shocked and scandalised to behold this giddy, fashionable, and modish crowd.  Demos, sweltering on the passing steamboat—­able to see, and, at the same time, free from interference on his watery kingdom—­jeered aloud as he passed close to the Terrace, and mocked with loud laughter that betokened not only the vacant but the insulting mind.  The skippers of the steamboats—­hardened Cockneys with an eye to business—­knew what a delight this baiting of the august assembly would be to the most democratic and most sarcastic crowd in Europe; and accordingly it became the “mot d’ordre” with the steamboat skipper, when the tide was full, to bring his vessel almost to the very walls of the Terrace, and thus to give the tripper the opportunity of gazing from very near at the lions at food and play.  If Demos could have come and seen as plainly at night in those days as during the afternoon, his shocked feelings would have been even more poignant and his language more irreverent.  Tea is, after all, a simple drink that makes the whole world akin; and even strawberries in this great year were within reach of the most modest purse.  But at night, entertainment is more costly.  Along the Terrace there is now, as everybody knows, a series of small dining-rooms; and here every night you might have listened to the pleasant music of woman’s laughter, punctuated by the pop of the champagne bottle.  Time was—­I remember it well—­when a member of Parliament who knew that there was any place where a lady could get something to eat was pointed to as a Parliamentary marvel, who knew his way about in an uncanny fashion; when the room in which a lady could dine had been seen by but few eyes and, indeed, was little better than a coalhole, low-roofed, dimly lit, buried in dark and deep recesses of an underworld of the House of Commons, as little known to the general