_Business done._--In Committee of Supply on Post Office Vote, a trifle of £26,151,830, the Holt Report on postmen's demand for higher wages discussed.
_Thursday._--Walking down Victoria Street on way to House of Commons, as is my custom of an afternoon, I come upon my old friend the sandwich-board man. He stands in the shadow of Westminster Abbey panoplied back and front with boards making the latest announcement of newcomers to Madame Tussaud's. Morning and afternoon, all day long, he stands there, the life of London surging past. We generally have a little chat, and occasionally he gets a cigar.
One mystery that long piqued me he solved. If you chance upon sandwich-board men marching to head-quarters, like old _Kaspar_ at his garden gate their day's work done, you will notice they always carry their boards upside down. The passer-by, consumed by desire to know what truth these proclaim, must needs assume inverted attitude in order to profit by announcement. Why do they so scrupulously observe that custom?
"Point of honour," says my sandwich-board man. "What you call class interests. We are paid little enough for so many hours' tramp. When the hour of deliverance strikes we turn the board upside down. So we do when we sit down by crowded thoroughfare to eat our mid-day bread-and-cheese, or bread without cheese as may happen. Not going to give the master more than he pays for."
What specially attracted me to-day was communication received from MEMBER FOR SARK. Says he hears that WINTERTON is about to be added to Madame Tussaud's!
Suppose this, next of course to Westminster Abbey, is highest compliment possible for public man. On reflection I say not quite. LULU stands on triple pinnacle of fame. On one or other the New Zealander, bored with the monotony of the ruins of London Bridge, sure to hap upon his name writ large.
There is the Harcourt Room in House of Commons, a spacious dining-hall cunningly contrived with lack of acoustical properties that make it difficult to hear what a conversational neighbour is saying. In time of political stress this useful, as preventing lapse into controversy at the table. Homeward bound from his last Antarctic trip, ERNEST SHACKLETON discovered three towering peaks of snow and ice. One he named Mount Asquith; another Mount Henry Lucy; a third Mount Harcourt.