In the Canadian House of Commons there are a number of little pages who run errands for members, and fetch them books and papers.  These boys sit on the steps of the Speaker’s chair, and when the House adjourns for dinner the pages hold a “Pages’ Parliament.”  One boy, elected by the others as Speaker, puts on a gown and seats himself in the Speaker’s chair; the “Prime Minister” and the members of the Government sit on the Government benches, the Leader of the Opposition with his supporters take their places opposite and the boys hold regular debates.  Many of the members took great interest in the “Pages’ Parliament,” and coached the boys for their debates.  I have seen Sir John Macdonald giving the fourteen-year-old “Premier” points for his speech that evening.

All-night sittings were far rarer at Ottawa than with us, and constituted quite an event.  Some of us went into the gallery at 5 a.m. after a dance, to see the end of a long and stormy sitting.  The House was very uproarious.  Some member had brought in a cricket-ball, and they were throwing each other catches across the House.  To the credit of Canadian M.P.’s, I must say that we never saw a single catch missed.  When Sir John rose to close the debate, there were loud cries of, “You have talked enough, John A. Give us a song instead.”  “All right,” cried Sir John, “I will give you ‘God save the Queen.’” And he forthwith started it in a lusty voice, all the members joining in.  The introduction of a cricket-ball might brighten all-night sittings in our own Parliament, though somehow I cannot quite picture to myself Mr. Asquith throwing catches to Sir Frederick Banbury across the floor of the House of Commons.

I was once in the gallery of the South African Parliament at Capetown, after the House had been sitting continuously for twenty hours.  The Speaker had had a stool brought him to rest his legs on, and was fast asleep in his chair, with his wig all awry.  Dutch farmer members from the Back-Veld were stretched out at full length on the benches in the lobbies, snoring loudly; in fact, the whole place was a sort of Parliamentary Pullman Sleeping-car.  That splendid man, the late General Botha, told me that late hours in Parliament upset him terribly, as he had been used all his life to going early to bed.  Though the exterior of the Capetown Parliament buildings is nothing very wonderful architecturally, the interior is very handsome, and quite surprisingly spacious.

The Governor-General gave two evening skating and tobaggoning parties at Rideau Hall every winter.  He termed these gatherings his “Arctic Cremornes,” after the then recently defunct gardens in London, and the parties were wonderfully picturesque.  In those days, though the fashion now has quite disappeared, all members of snow-shoe and tobogganing clubs, men and women alike, wore coloured blanket-suits consisting of knickerbockers and long coats, with bright-coloured stockings, sash, and knitted toque (invariably pronounced