* * * * *

    “SITUATIONS OPEN.

    (COLONIAL, INDIAN AND FOREIGN.)

    IRELAND.—­Invoice Clerk required by leading firm of Wholesale Druggists
    in Ireland.”—­Trade Paper.

Dominion Home Rule casts its shadow before.

* * * * *

    “The decree of the Archbishop of Canterbury for the creation of a
    separate Providence of Wales was read.”—­Scotch Paper.

What’s wrong with Mr. LLOYD GEORGE?

* * * * *

[Illustration:  RESTORING THE BALANCE.

VOICE FROM AUDIENCE:  “IT’S A TRICK!”

PERFORMER:  “OF COURSE IT’S A TRICK!  THE POINT IS THAT IT HASN’T BEEN DONE
FOR YEARS AND YEARS—­AND I’LL TROUBLE YOU TO APPLAUD IT.”]

* * * * *

ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

Monday, April 12th.—­Neither Ministers nor ordinary Members showed any marked eagerness to resume their Parliamentary labours.  Little green oases were to be seen in every part of the House, and on the Treasury Bench even Under-Secretaries (who often have to maintain a precarious perch on one another’s knees) had room to spread themselves.

The Underground Railway may, like Nature, be careless of the individual, but it is extremely careful of the typewriter, and insists on making a special charge for this instrument, officially regarded as a bicycle.  But as Sir ERIC GEDDES announced that this extortion, “though legal,” was in his opinion “neither just nor expedient,” we may hope that it will shortly be abandoned.  The Ministry of Transport at last seems likely to justify its existence.

[Illustration:  “HOT STUFF.”

MR. MILLS OF DARTFORD.]

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY was annoyed to find that there has been no change during the recess in the regulations relating to passports, and that they are still not issued to Soviet Russia.  The tone of the Minister’s reply rather suggested that the Government might be disposed to make an exception in favour of the hon. and gallant Member.

Tuesday, April 13th.—­After the official announcement that the Slough depot had been sold, and the chorus of satisfaction in the Press that the Government had disposed of its white elephant at a profit, Mr. HOGGE was disappointed to learn that, though the heads of agreement were being discussed, no contract had yet been signed.  He was indeed rather surprised that the Government should think of parting at all with what the LEADER OF THE HOUSE had assured them was going to be “a dripping roast for the taxpayer.”  Mr. LAW smilingly disclaimed the coinage of this appetising phrase.

Mr. MILLS, the new Member for Dartford, is credited with being “very hot stuff” (a cadet, I am told, of the Moulin Rouge family), but he looked much too trim and spruce for a real revolutionary as he walked up, amid the plaudits of his Labour colleagues, to take the oath and his seat.  In fact Mr. GREENWOOD, the new Coalition-Unionist Member for Stockport, who followed him, has much more the air of an homme du peuple.  As for Mr. FILDES, his Coalition-Liberal colleague, I don’t wonder that Stockport favoured a candidate whose genial countenance so strongly resembles that of Mr. Punch.