_House of Commons, Monday, August 26._--Doorkeepers and police puzzled by notable gathering of strangers. Came in one by one. No one seemed to know another; yet there was about them, according to Mr. HORSLEY'S testimony, certain signs of brotherhood. None wore top hats; every man's hair was longer than it is ordinarily worn; several carried cloaks, mostly brown about the seams, cut, as far as Mr. HORSLEY can remember, something after pattern of cloak worn by Lord TENNYSON when he came to be sworn in as a peer of the realm, and was, on first presenting himself, turned away by the policeman in the outer hall under the impression that he was collecting empty bottles.
Most of the strangers had orders for special gallery. Some had seats under the gallery. Others (these, it turned out when the secret was fully disclosed, were the sonneteers) found seats on the higher, but, in the House of Commons, less distinguished, slopes of Parnassus, allotted to undistinguished strangers who ballot for places.
They were the candidates for the Poet Laureateship, or rather some of them. Walking out after questions were over, SARK found a double row of poets sitting on the stone benches right and left of the corridor, waiting for a possible turn at the ballot--waiting with same dogged patience, same unquenchable hope, with which they tarry for public recognition.
All due to JOHNSTON of Ballykilbeg. Turning aside for moment from the vexed Bermothes of theology, and the suspicious conduct of Irish Members of the Catholic faith, BALLYKILBEG permitted his gaze to fall on the vacant chair of the Poet Laureate. Gave notice of intention to ask PRINCE ARTHUR at to-day's sitting what he meant to do about it. Hence this commotion in the drear woods and the hungry thickets that clothe the foot of Parnassus.
"Sorry for 'em," said BALLYKILBEG, looking up towards crowded galleries. "They're a poor-looking lot. Don't believe there's a Master of an Orange Lodge among 'em. Anyhow they're all out of it. My man is WILFRID LAWSON. Don't mean to say he put me up to ask the question with any ulterior personal views. But he knew what I was at, and he knows my opinion of him. We don't agree in politics, and he's not sound on the Pope of Rome. But for verse that fetches you, the poetry you can understand without first tying wet cloth round your head, give me WILFRID LAWSON. PRINCE ARTHUR refers me to THE MARKISS. I'll call and see him, taking with me a choice selection of WILFRID'S verse, which I'll read to him."