Great statesmen, it appears, have some kind of uncanny influence over that most unreasonable fowl, the Wellington weathercock, which, charm she never so wisely, is denied to the mere holiday-maker. Yesterday, the date of the opening of Parliament, was one of those still, silver-grey afternoons which must sometimes visit old London when the Lord Mayor and all his red-robed aldermen go driving in state through the streets. Over the facade of Parliament Buildings the flags hung listlessly, with none of the wild disorder in their ranks which usually marks state occasions in the city of southerly busters [sic]. The steps leading up to the big marble doorway were resplendent in a green awning and a most imposing red carpet. Somehow I couldn't nerve myself to tread on that carpet. It seemed destined for the feet of great men and large ladies. So I walked gingerly up the extreme outer edge of the steps, and entered the building.

Even in the entrance hall there was that peculiar, waiting-on-tiptoe atmosphere which invades an empty ballroom an hour before the lights go up and the dance begins. An orderly appeared from nowhere. (Nobody has ever yet seen an orderly enter or leave a room: you just turn round and they're there, and the moment you look the other way they disappear in a puff of smoke.) I clung to him—mentally, that is—as a drowning man does to a lifebuoy. There are corridors in that building in which a man could lose himself and never be seen again until finally his skeleton was discovered and carefully transported to the museum at the extreme end of the building. Indeed, there have been several well-authenticated instances of this…. But the orderlies, thank goodness, are nearly always with us, and are quite prepared to lead our steps in the way whither they should go. One of these days I may see the session when some real humanitarian will introduce a system of sheep-dogs and crooks for orderlies[.]

It is with a feeling of solemnity almost amounting to awe that one enters the gallery of the Legislative Council and timidly secretes oneself behind a convenient marble pillar.

The Legislative Council was New Zealand's upper house. It was abolished in 1951.

Here, too, is the same sense of anticipation—rows upon rows of empty chairs, cushioned couches, all ready cleared for action, and little carved wooden doors, looking as if they were waiting for someone to say "Open Sesame." The Chamber, lit with swinging lamps, is full of the same dim, warm-tinted light which shines through stained-glass windows in a cathedral.

Presently, by slow degrees, the Ladies' Gallery begins to fill. Who says that we are the frivolous sex? On every chair is plastered a grim and forbidding "Reserved" notice. Now and again some uniformed official can be heard saying, "Impossible, Madam!" to some disgruntled late-comer.

One by one the more favoured ladies slip silently into their seats; yes, silently. Here at least is no tapping of little high-heeled shoes, no frivolous and empty chatter. Parliament is the last stronghold of man's old supremacy. There, and nowhere else, the modern woman "Speaks when she's spoken to, turns in her toes, does what she's bid, or out she goes!"

I have been unable to trace this allusion.

By the way, here in the Ladies' Gallery

Dominion: Gallary.

Something is happening down in the depths of the Chamber. Two soldiers, with a glitter of medals about them, stand rigidly to attention at one of the little doors. It seems strange to see the familiar khaki in this abode of dress suits and dignity. In the dim light they look unreal, like figures from a story book.

You know the sound that a telephone bell makes when there's a particularly irate subscriber at the other end of it? Just such a sound galvanises the Whispering Gallery. The tiny silken frou-frou of skirts stops, and everyone is mentally on tip-toe.

Down in the Chamber doors spring open as if by magic. Slowly, and with vast decorum, the members of the Legislative Council—fathers and grandfathers of our country—take their seats. Somehow I had expected them to look a little more grave, careworn, and disapproving. Most of them appeared perfectly cheerful—almost as if they thought that the bad old world was doing as well as could be expected.

Another ripple of excitement in the gallery. Two gentlemen in pale green cravats and superb white waistcoats take the floor, and bow to each other as deeply as the waistcoats will let them. A stentorian voice calls "Mr. Speaker!" in a tone which will brook no denial. Through a suddenly opened door one catches a glimpse of uniform. For a moment the proceedings cease being picturesque and become splendid. There is a metallic clinking of swords as the Governor-General and his retinue enter the Chamber.

Sir Charles Fergusson was the Governor-General in 1925.

And where, may I ask, is the woman who would presume to be impertinent to a man with a wig? (A court wig, I mean, not the marcel-waved kind affected by the clandestinely bald.) The Speaker, in his iron-grey wig and flowing gown, is quite as impressive a figure as the gentlemen in scarlet.

Charles Statham was Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1923-35.

But I think that the hero of the day is really the Man with the Mace. I almost said the Mace with the Man. If it's as heavy as it looks, that majestic instrument of law and order must weigh tons. And the gallant Sergeant-at-Arms held it throughout the proceedings as though it were nothing more troublesome than a bayonet.

There is a faint "H-s-s-s-h" in the Gallery as the Governor-General begins his Speech.

The Governor-General's speech can be found in Hansard 206: 1-3.

Later, one looks, for a moment, into the House of Representatives, with its high-backed upholstered chairs which seem to say, "Business is Business."

A small amount of business was conducted in the House of Representatives on June 25; see Hansard 206: 4.

"The House is adjourned." The last lingering stragglers make their way from the Gallery. Next week there will be no uniforms, no pomp and very little ceremony. The game will be on in earnest.

Ichabod, Ichabod! The glory is departed:

Robert Browning, "Waring," lines 99-100.

The Complete Works of Robert Browning, gen. ed. Roma A. King, Jr., vol. 3 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1971).

See also Robin Hyde, Journalese (Auckland: National Printing Company, 1934), p. 114.

You know, it's wonderful how the first fine, careful awe vanishes like morning dew from the mind of the average female frequenter of Parliament. On her first entrance through those historic portals she wipes her shoes reverently on the mat and proceeds upstairs with the feeling that the collective eyes of the entire establishment are fixed in cold contempt on the back of her neck. But by degrees this wholesome sense of her own insignificance begins to pass. On her second visit—or should I say visitation?—the marble pillars have perceptibly dwindled in height; the orderlies—previously almost as impressive as the marble pillars—seem friendly folk; and even the Great Men themselves look a little less god-like and apart than they did at first glance.

Up in the Ladies' Gallery the empty chairs look rather desolate and forlorn. Where are the girls of yesterday?

Cf. Francois Villon, ["Ballade of the Ladies of Bygone Times"], from "The Testament," line 336.

The Complete Works of François Villon, trans. Anthony Bonner (New York: Bantam, 1964). See also the column for 19 September 1925.

After all, perhaps it's just as well that Youth is out in the sunshine, gathering roses while it may;

Cf. Robert Herrick, "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time," line 1.

The Poetical Works of Robert Herrick, ed. L. C. Martin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956). See also the column for 1 October 1925.

Very little business was transacted. Later on in the year, I suppose, Bills fly thick and fast, if not very far, but just now it is hard to believe that the quietly dignified gentlemen on the benches could bring themselves to the point of arguing with, and even flatly contradicting each other. They all look—and sound—such exceedingly good friends.

Squarely confronting each member is a little desk, very smart and workman-like in its new coat of varnish. One wonders if sometimes, in moments of temporary mental aberration, sedate members dream that they are irresponsible schoolboys again and, with drawn penknives, set out to explore the internal anatomy of those priggishly shiny desks.

I think that when first I saw the beautifully neat, clean, and tidy abode of our Elders and Betters, I thought with a passing regret of the deplorably ramshackle old building in which by-gone members said their say and went their way. It's not that I don't like marble columns and swinging lamps—I do. But being a mere unreasonable woman, I wished that we could find some way of persuading the memories, associations, and ancestral spirits of the old House to take up their residence in the new and more commodious quarters. Perhaps they have done so—one can at least hope that the tributes paid to-day to the men who have gone were not lost in those dim recesses of the great Chamber.

The knitting needles stop, with a little click, as the new Prime Minister pays his

Dominion: has.

Other names, familiar to old campaigners and newcomers alike, are placed on Parliament's long roll of honour. Very simple and very touching are the tributes paid to departed comrades. One sentence—quoted in honour of a distinguished Maori statesman—has lingered in my mind, "The canoe of death, built from the tree of sorrow, must visit every house."

Maui Pomare, speaking in a tribute to Eparaima Te Mutu Kapa: "The canoe of fate, fashioned out of the tree of sorrow, has visited the house of this chief, as it must visit the house of every man…" (Hansard 206: 22). Hyde attributes this line to Sir Apirana Ngata in Journalese (p. 39).

There were men in the House this afternoon who had known Mr. Massey when he was a mere M.P., sitting at the feet of his elders absorbing Parliamentary wisdom, men to whom Ballance, Seddon, Atkinson, and Grey were not mere golden pages in a history book, but living beings[.]

The four men mentioned were all former Premiers of New Zealand. Harry Atmore particularly mentioned the resemblance between Massey and these statesmen; see Hansard 206: 12.

The lonely occupants of the Ladies' Gallery are beginning to feel the strain of this quietly fatalistic atmosphere. For to-day at least women are not included in the Parliamentary scheme of things. The House is a rendezvous for old comrades—both the living and the dead. A very human touch was given to the proceedings by a speaker who, in paying tribute to a friend who had "gone west," forgot to say "the late honourable member," and said instead, "the honourable member," as if his comrade was still sitting on the bench opposite, ready to take part in some new debate.

Hyde is perhaps thinking of Sydney Smith's tribute to Oliver Samuel; see Hansard 206: 17.

One by one the younger and less patient members slip away from the benches, leaving the old-timers to talk of the days when all the world was young.

The place becomes very cold; through a suddenly opened door a little wind steals in, as quietly as a memory. I think nearly everyone is glad when the Speaker, magnificent as ever in his iron-grey wig, adjourns the sitting and leaves us to our memories.

Sometimes, in moments of morbid introspection, I think that we uninitiated folk don't appreciate the sacrifices that the statesmen of this country make on our behalf: we're too busy grumbling about the sacrifices that we have to make to enable the whole concern—meaning Parliament—to keep on running. But there are greater degrees of unselfish devotion even than this.

What, for instance, but an almost unholy passion for duty could extract the weary M.P. from his lair on a night when all really respectable citizens were toasting their toes in front of a good old-fashioned fire? Yet, forth he comes, defying the elements with no more deadly weapon at his command than an umbrella, which, like as not, seizes the very first opportunity to blow inside out. You know Wellington. Some of us—I'm not speaking of men, who know everything, and are therefore beyond mortal aid, but of women, who are admittedly shameless little ignoramuses—are under the impression that a nice, well-oiled, tractable country like this could safely be left to run itself for once in a while. Well, it can't. I suppose there are dwellers in heathen darkness—even in this comparatively civilised land of ours—who have never even heard tell of an Imprest Supply Bill? H'm. I thought as much. To be perfectly frank with you—just for this once—I hadn't myself until half an hour ago.

I know for a fact that quite 50 per cent. of my benighted sex, and, say, 90 per cent. of those more enlightened, believe that the Government has practically a blank cheque on the financial reservoirs of this country. They don't know, and can't and won't believe, that if Parliament didn't pass an Imprest Supply Bill now and again, the whole country would be turned upside down and round about. They certainly don't credit the fact that not one penny can be extracted from our National Treasury—even under chloroform—without the sanction of the whole House. I wouldn't have believed it myself if I hadn't sat in the Ladies' Gallery yesterday evening, watching Cabinet Ministers trying to persuade the Labour members to be good.

The debate on the Imprest Supply Bill on 29 June 1925 can be found in Hansard 206: 22-44.

Briefly, the position was this (nobody puts things briefly in Parliament, so I have to leave out dozens of really interesting irrelevancies); if, by hook or by crook, and despite the knavish tricks and well-aimed bricks or the afore-mentioned Labour benches, the Government did not succeed in passing the Bill in question (very much in question, it seemed to me) the Civil servant, his aged mother, invalid wife and seventeen children, would all be waiting on the mat, cap in hand, at the beginning of next month, simply because there wouldn't be any money to pay them with. And that, you must admit, would be a calamity of national importance—distressing for the Civil servant (who would probably reverse gear and become exceedingly uncivil), embarrassing for the Government and annoying to the people as a whole. At a crisis like this, you'd think that even a Labour member would act first and talk afterwards. But they didn't. With Labour there is no time like the present for talking, no time like the future for acting, and no time at all for thinking.

Nevertheless, though the Labour benches are largely occupied by enfants terribles—the naughty boys of an otherwise extremely sedate and respectable family—I really think that the old House would feel very dull without them. One never knows just what they are not going to do next.

Take an example: The House had received His Excellency's message with reference to the proposed Bill with due pomp and ceremony. Ministers were just getting ready to take off their coats, roll up their sleeves, and really get to business—and there and then began the deluge.

Labour arose en masse from the benches whereon it had been sitting, apparently lost in "maiden meditation fancy free,"

William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, act II, scene i, lines 161-64.

The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005). See also the column for 10 July 1925.

Slowly, with the dignity of conscious virtue, the entire Liberal benches arose and firmly declined to have anything whatever to do with such childish quarrels.

Wilford, the Leader of the Opposition, declined to vote either for or against Fraser's motion as his party was in negotiation with the government on the possibility of parliamentary cooperation and withdrew his causus; see Hansard 206: 23.

One member, looking over to the all-but-deserted Liberal wing, remarked:—"Never saw the Liberal benches look better in my life."

This remark is not recorded in Hansard, but was noted, in slightly different wording, by members of the Press Gallery; see for example “Government’s First Victory,” New Zealand Times, 30 June 1925, p. 10.

The motion was put to the vote, and great was the fall thereof.

Cf. Matthew 7 v. 27.

And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

Afterwards, to a sophisticated politician who lent a sympathetic ear to my feminine wonderings about this and that, I asked the reason of Labour's, to me, incomprehensible performance. "My dear young lady," he said, in a fatherly voice—can anyone explain to me the obvious fatherliness of our politicians?—"when you grow up and become sophisticated like me, you will understand that in politics, as in everything else in this wicked world, there are wheels within wheels. That No-confidence Motion was a little trap set by the gentlemen of the Labour Party, for the gentlemen of the Liberal Party. The spider, you know."

"Oh, I see," said I. "But the fly was too fly!"

"Precisely," said he.

Which merely proves to me that politicians, be they ever so grown-up, are just children after all.

I didn't see that Bill passed, nor do I believe that any other frequenter of the Ladies' Gallery witnessed its installation.

The House adjourned at 11:12pm.

But I left the Bill in the hands of the Government with entire confidence. The Cabinet Ministers and their faithful followers looked as if they had braced themselves to stand anything. Labour or no Labour, the world, the Civil Service and the country's business will go on.

I felt in my bones last night, as I climbed those now familiar marble steps, that everything was going to be—just exactly as everything was. Orderlies—mere ghosts of their usual dignified selves—flitted wearily about, with hardly enough strength left to present arms and ask unauthorised visitors for the countersign. Cabinet Ministers draped themselves negligently on those stern and upright-looking couches, wishing that their dignity would suffer them to snatch an occasional forty, or even fifty, winks. Even the Speaker looked as if he saw hitherto undreamed of advantages in the career of the late Rip Van Winkle. Only the Labour Party came up smiling—a peculiarly sardonic, businesslike sort of a smile. But as far as the rest of the House was concerned—well, when the Speaker arose to pronounce a benediction over the Assembly, most of the members looked as if they really believed that they could do with a little divine assistance.

You know, as I've frequently had just occasion to remark, we women are a shamelessly frivolous sex. We understand—most of us—how to bake a cake, and possibly how to cook a goose—our own or someone else's. But politics are a game we do not understand, which is, perhaps, just as well for politicians. Notwithstanding this, there's no really valid reason why we should take it for granted that nobody without a beard and a bald spot can grasp the less abstruse and unfathomable details of Politics. (Please note the capital letter.)

Take the question of the Address-in-Reply. If you are all as hopelessly unversed in political science as I am, and, I'm afraid

Dominion: afraidw.

At first blush, the Address-in-Reply seems to proceed smoothly enough. The vast machine of Government is set in motion by the member last elected: this is a great, if somewhat alarming night for him.

In this case, Ewan McLennan, who had been sworn in on Opening Day as Mp for Franklin. See Hansard 206: 68-71 for his speech.

All through the evening the Labour benches have been almost uncannily good—so good that one might suppose, at first glance, that they were all asleep. Oddly enough, the orderly and well-behaved benches seem tame after the tumultuous House of yesterday evening. Listening to Labour members talk is quite a pleasant occupation—so long as one pays no attention whatever to anything they say. However, just when Cabinet Ministers are beginning to rub their eyes, and look at Mr. Holland as if wondering whether he is some new species of optical illusion, the fun of the evening begins. An unwary member makes some well-meaning remark in depreciation of the well and unfavourably known "ca' canny" policy, and Mr. Holland becomes very wide awake indeed.

A "ca' canny" policy refers to the practice of "going slow" at work (Oxford English Dictionary).

By the way, a stranger to our customs might, on first entering the House, imagine himself an intruder into an early Victorian idyll. There, and nowhere else, are the legitimate descendants of the old horsehair sofas upon which our great grandpapas sat when conducting their courtships. There are the members, sitting, at first, very far apart; then a little closer together in deed; sometimes one even sees them spring apart when they feel the Speaker's eye upon them. As I

Dominion: a.

But to come back to the Address-in-Reply, which, when last we heard of it, was undergoing a process of cold criticism from the Labour benches. You might think—as I did in the days of my youth and ignorance—that in one night its fate would be sealed. Not in the least.

The debate was adjourned at 9:09pm.

I honestly think that there's nothing harder in this world than sitting down, in very cold blood, and endeavouring to pay attention to somebody's speech when one's new silk stockings are clinging damply and dismally to one's—ankles. Going up to the House yesterday I splashed my way through an inland sea of puddles and left squelchy footmarks on the beautiful crimson carpet all the way along the corridor. I'm sure that the moment my back was turned an orderly with a whisk-broom popped out and removed all traces of my passing. Nobody could help getting fond of that carpet. Anyhow, as I've said before, my shoes were wet, my stockings were wet, and my eyes were wet (nearly) with sympathetic tears for the above-mentioned orderly. How he must hate Cabinet Ministers who take nines in boots! But, as I was just going to say, you can't blame me, considering the general dampness of the atmosphere, if these notes are somewhat dry.

To die, they say, is a very big adventure: and to live is a series of little ones.

Cf. J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan, act III.

Peter: To die will be an awfully big adventure.

The Plays of J. M. Barrie, ed. A. E. Wilson (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1942), p. 545. See also the column for 19 September 1925.

She was very tall and gracious and stately, and she had known Mr. Massey when he was a mere boy. "The finest speaker and straightest man in Parliament, my dear," she declared, with a little wave of her hand which indicated contempt for our mere moderns. "Somehow, now that he's gone, I've lost heart over Parliament. There's nobody nowadays to touch him…"

"Mr. Coates?" I suggested timidly. "A good boy," she replied tolerantly. (Fancy anyone calling our dignified Prime Minister that!) "Mr. Massey trained him and he will stand fast for the old traditions and the old party."

Just then I interposed a question about the present Liberal Party. She smiled—an enigmatic little smile which might have meant much, but which certainly said nothing. Milady was discreet. "And the Labour Party," I ventured. She pursed up her mouth and shook her head. "Schoolboys—mere schoolboys" she exclaimed, with a little grimace which meant, I think, that if she were the schoolmarm—I mean the Speaker—they would be very well disciplined schoolboys indeed. I would have enjoyed a continuation of the discussion—I've such quantities to learn about the devious ways of the State, not to mention the statesmen—but just at that moment the bell rang. It always does, doesn't it?

Perhaps you're wondering why I don't stop talking about totally irrelevant matters, and, coming down to earth and tintacks, tell you just exactly what happened in the House itself. But tintacks are such uncomfortable things to come down to, aren't they? However, to tell you the absolute truth of the matter—I do hope you appreciate that! —for fully an hour after the proceedings opened I was hopelessly and completely lost. Parliamentary proceedings are as bewildering to a newcomer as Parliamentary corridors—only more so. And this time there were no friendly orderlies to direct my erring footsteps into the proper path. I'll tell you exactly what happened.

First of all, the ordinary business of the day was transacted: some of it seemed to my inexperienced eye to be most extraordinary business. But that's as may be, and, anyhow, what does it matter?

For the first time in the present session the spotlight turned full upon the Liberal benches—from which, by the way, many of the old familiar faces were missing. At one stage of the proceedings six Liberal members—I counted 'em—were left blooming alone. The rest were probably transacting important public business in front of a cosy fire. But the few remaining were a particularly gallant few. Mr. Sidey (a mild and somewhat petit man with a fierce moustache) got up and made an impressive speech all about agricultural colleges, fusion, and midwifery.

See Hansard 206: 93-99. The term "fusion" was used to refer to the negotiations on parliamentary co-operation between the government and the Liberal party.

Of course, as you've guessed long before this, the Labour benches didn't "lie low and say nuffin' "

Cf. Joel Chandler Harris, "The Wonderful Tar-Baby," from Brer Rabbit.

Tar-Baby aint sayin' nothing, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

Brer Rabbit, ed. Marcus Crouch (London: Penguin, 1977), p. 13. See also the columns for 29 July 1925 and 2 September 1925, and Robin Hyde, Journalese (Auckland: National Printing Company, 1934), p. 37.

Mr. Sidey, in discussing agriculture, declares: "We must take measures for the advantage of the—"

Mr. Monteith: Liberal Party?

Mr. Sidey (with needless emphasis): No! For the Department!

Mr. Monteith (somewhat disappointed): Oh!

No such exchange is recorded in Hansard.

A touching little appeal for members to get the business of the House, including the election, finished before the exhibition (did I tell you Mr. Sidey comes from Dunedin?),

The New Zealand and South Seas exhibition took place in Dunedin in November 1925.

Sir James Parr, Minister of Justice, followed up with a brief—or comparatively brief—resume of the fusion situation.

See Hansard 206: 99-105.

The last part of Sir James Parr's speech touched a broader field, that of European politics and their connection with the Dominion. Somehow this talk of "old, unhappy, far-off things"

William Wordsworth, "The Solitary Reaper," lines 17-20.

Poems, in Two Volumes, and Other Poems, 1800-1807, ed. Jared Curtis (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1983).

Mr. Holland's amendment to the Address-in–Reply was a sort of anti-climax. All—or nearly all—the measures proposed in the King's Speech were dissected and flung aside.

See Hansard 206: 105.

Labour seems to find a great deal wrong with the world, without knowing just how exactly to put it right. "The rates of interest have gone up!" declaimed Mr. Holland.

Plaintive voice from the Government benches: Everything's gone up!

That, I feel sure, was the voice of a harassed family man.

Holland did mention the increase in rates but Hansard does not record the subsequent interjection noted by Hyde. See Hansard 206: 107.

Mr. Holland had just begun to find his stride when the Speaker adjourned the meeting. And that's the last that I heard of the amendment to the Address-in-Reply. An afternoon of it was sufficient—the evening I shall spend elsewhere.

Don't you remember repeating that little formula, with your noses flattened against the window pane, in the days when you were very young and trusting? A little of my old touching faith in formulas still clings to me, for yesterday afternoon, going up to the House, I found myself repeating it over and over under my breath. And sure enough, didn't the sun come out, and smile the timid but confident smile of a girl who has kept her fiance waiting for hours, and is so sorry, but she quite forgot her appointment? Halfway along the path that leads through the level green lawns in Parliamentary grounds, I met a chirpy little gentleman in a speckled waistcoat. He put his head on one side, looked at me with beady bright eyes, and cheeped "Well, it is a fine day, isn't it?"

"Passable," I retorted, and made to pass on to my true and lawful destination. But he stood on one leg, waggled his wings, and hopped along beside me.

"Whither away?" he inquired.

"In there," I said, indicating the Buildings with a lordly wave of my hand. "England expects that every man this day shall do his duty."

Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805.

England expects that every man will do his duty. (Oxford Dictionary of Quotations).

"Oh, I see," he replied, with a twinkle in his eye. "Digging for worms, eh? Families are the deuce, aren't they?"

"It's not that at all," I responded indignantly. But he flew off, and sat waving his wing at me from the nearest telegraph wire. So I collected my thoughts and other belongings and proceeded into the House.

The consequence is that now, about five hours later, I have a headache and a jaundiced sort of outlook on the world. As interpreted by Labour members, life is mostly froth and bubble. They seem to believe that one-half of society spends its time getting money without working, and the other half in working without getting money—almost.

See Armstrong's speech in particular (Hansard 206: 140-46).

There's the silence of a theatre, when the curtain drops and the lights go out, and the players vanish away into the shadowy world behind the scenes; the silence of an old house from which all the life and laughter has flown away; but nothing in the world quite so silent as the House before the members come in. It's a silence that makes itself felt by means of little cold prickles along one's spine. If you half shut your eyes, you can see the courtly ghosts of dead and gone members—statesmen of the gay-old-dog days—lolling back in those empty benches, and whispering rapier-keen asides compared to which the sharpest interjection of to-day is mere spade-work. For once I welcomed the tinkle of that execrable little bell.

There are two phases of the pomp and ceremony that glorify Parliamentary procedure which always impress with a sense of the picturesque. One is the military smartness with which the Sergeant-at Arms clicks his heels when depositing the Mace in its place, and the other is the Speaker's wig. Yes, you're perfectly correct. I simply can't get that wig out of my mind. My idea is this: why shouldn't all members be presented with similar toupees? Then, in days to come, when the shingle has set its devastating seal on all womankind, we would be able to adjourn to the House, and, with tears in our eyes, gaze upon the splendour that once was our own. In time we would probably originate some such saying as "A member's crowning glory is his wig," and pass an Act prohibiting bobbing. We might have becoming chestnut transformations for Reform members, white for the Liberals—if there are any Liberals—to indicate their political character, and, of course, bright red for the Labour Party. Honestly, don't you think that's something in the nature of an idea? Besides … some of them could do with it.

But to come to such business as was—and wasn't—transacted. During the earlier part of the day, an earnest young Labour member, with one of those high-minded-looking switchbacks, arose and gave the House to understand that at his earliest opportunity he intended to question the Government concerning the number of titles and honours awarded during its reign, as compared with those donated under the auspices of the previous Government.

Although it is not recorded in Hansard, Lee did comment on the Honours system. See “House and Lobby,” New Zealand Times, 3 July 1925, p. 6.

"That's me," murmured a lady in the gallery, with melancholy interest.

"Eh?" I remarked, startled.

"Yes," she replied. "They gave me a decoration. But after all," brightening a little, "it was just an M.B.E., so I'm only a moderately bad egg. Do you think they'll send me to the guillotine?" I wanted to reassure her, but my conscience wouldn't let me.

But the worst was still to come. Mr Armstrong, of the Labour wing, made a speech—nearly all blood, with a little thunder thrown in for good measure—denouncing everyone and everything within sight.

See Hansard 206: 104-48.

All things must come to an end sooner or later—comforting thought, isn't it? Naming no names, and meaning no offence to nobody, I really think that at their age certain members ought to have learned that abusing other parties

Dominion: partiees.

At this stage of the proceedings, Mr. Rhodes,

Thomas Rhodes, the M.P. for Thames, not Sir Robert Heaton Rhodes.

"Once upon a time," whispered the lady next to me, with something of a regretful sigh, "the Labour Party used to get up and hold caucuses on the floor. But not under this Speaker!"

"Not really!" I whispered back, much impressed. I don't quite know just what a caucus is—some kind of tangi or war-dance, isn't it? —but I do wish I'd seen one.

A Liberal member was the next speaker.

De la Perrelle.

Tinkle, tinkle! That exasperating little bell interrupted Sir John Luke in the exact middle of his speech, and me in the middle of a delicious rosy day-dream, wherein I rescued Mr. Sidey from the onslaught of a justly incensed motor-bus, in return for which, as a trifling recompense for my services, he was just beginning to tell me all the facts about Fusion.

"Here, you!" said the orderly. "Tea time!" I sighed, took up my goods and chattels, and departed.

You know the sort of morning when you arise with an instinctive feeling that everyone and everything is going to do exactly what you don't want them to? Of course, you blame your cook, your climate, or your conscience—anything but your own plain, unnatural cussedness—for this unreasoning depression. Yesterday afternoon I went up to the House fully prepared to look down my nose with a "we-are-not-amused" sort of expression throughout the entire afternoon. But before half an hour had passed I found myself uncurling myself, rubbing my eyes, and leaning anxiously over the edge of the Gallery. I heard things, during that all too short space of time, that I'd never dreamed about before—not even after a crayfish supper.

Did you know that scientists have prepared a special sort of epidemic which, while it lets men severely alone, is ready and willing to destroy our national rabbit population, if they'll only stand still and let themselves be vaccinated with it? Ah! I thought not; but Mr. Buddo knows. He was telling us all about it this afternoon, and is probably at the present moment neck-deep in schemes for overcoming the conscientious objections of rabbits to vaccination.

This matter was mentioned in the debate on the Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute. Buddo mentioned that he "had recently been informed by two scientists in Christchurch that they had succeeded in developing an epidemic that would be deadly to rabbits, and quite harmless to all other stock" (Hansard 206: 200).

On arrival, I found myself alone, alone, all, all alone, in a gallery which is more awe-inspiring than any wide, wide sea in the universe.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," lines 597-98.

Poetical Works, ed. J. C. C. Mays, vol. 1.2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

It was with a sinking sort of feeling that I witnessed the tabling of returns from various insurance offices, county councils, and similar organisations, which I had previously believed to be answerable only to their Maker.

Possibly a reference to the Matamata County Council Empowering Bill (Hansard 206: 192).

Mr. Bollard had just tabled the returns and proceedings of the Royal New Zealand Institute of Science, and was about to sink back into his comfortable seat when the Labour Party[,] backed up by the Liberals, and even mildly supported by Reform members, let him have it. They came out of a clear sky. First of all the Heavenly Twins—

In Greek mythology the Heavenly Twins referred to Castor and Pollux, the twin brothers of Helen and Clytemnestra.

For the first time since I commenced sitting at their feet, all ready to absorb wisdom, the three parties seemed in complete accord. And to be perfectly frank, the result, though interesting, was just a little tame. I wonder what queer streak in the average human mentality caused us, in the bad old days, to waste our own time and someone else's money at anything from cock fighting to bull baiting? Whatever it is, it hasn't quite died out. Parliament is one of our few surviving arenas; but now and again the gladiators stop fighting and get some work done.

So there aren't any flippant little interjections from Labour to record; no stately Cabinet Minister played the part of heavy, but kind-hearted, father to the young and impertinent members of the House, nor did the Liberals, as is customary, take the role of mild maiden aunts. They just sat and chatted peaceably together about science. It appears that our management of scientific institutions is, to say the least of it, unscientific.

But several interesting little matters cropped up. Most of us, now, for instance, are not particularly prone to regarding insects as the friends of man. In fact, in the case of spiders, cockroaches, etc. (that "etc." covers a multitude of sinners), we even find their attentions a little embarrassing. Insects, to us, are squishy-squashy things that spin webs and build cocoons where they aren't wanted, and that, without any provocation whatever, deliberately drown themselves in our tea and cremate themselves in our candle-flame. That just shows our ignorance. Mr. Atmore likes them. He is particularly chummy with some friendly little creature with a long scientific name (farmers probably class it under the heading of "Bug"), which has just saved us some hundreds of thousands of pounds by dining on the woolly aphis, which, as even we know, is a pariah in the insect world.

Atmore noted that a previous speaker "had made reference to the natural enemy of the woolly aphis, and it would no doubt interest honourable members to know that last year nearly £10,000 had been saved which would have been expended on purchasing spraying material" (Hansard 206: 196).

But the whole truth of the matter—admitted by all alike—is that while, in the matter of science, other countries are using hydro-electric power New Zealand is still at the candle stage.

See for example Sullivan's speech (Hansard 206: 198-99).

The same trouble appears to prevail among our budding lawyers. It seems that by the time we have trained them, thereby incapacitating them for other work, they find themselves obliged to earn their livings by housebreaking or similar ancient and dishonourable professions; which is more than a little awkward, as frequently their early training enables them to escape scot free.

Sullivan noted that "[s]ome professions were quite overcrowded, as, for example, the profession of law. Hordes of law students were being turned out from the law colleges, and it was questionable where they could make a living…" (Hansard 206: 198).

Well, well! One of these days, so the weather prophets tell us, this is going to be a disgustingly rich country, with money enough for everything and everyone. And then, perhaps, if they're still alive, Mr. Buddo, Mr. Sullivan, and Mr. Bollard may between them be able to break back-country folk of preferring horses to steam-tractors and mother's corns to meteorological bureaux. I don't know that the last-named would be much of an improvement, anyhow. Mr. Bates never told me to bring my umbrella this morning—and it's raining again!

Daniel Bates was Director of the New Zealand Meteorological Office from 1909-27. See also the column for 11 July 1925.

Yesterday afternoon I made a solemn vow, not the first, by any means, not yet the last, but none the less perfectly solemn. It was this: never again (solemn vows always begin like that, don't they?) to start a discussion by making remarks, charitable or otherwise, about the weather. It seems, at first, almost too outrageously unconventional to enter into polite conversation without drawing attention to the fineness or brutal and blustering coarseness of the day. Nevertheless, I said I would, so here goes.

Just one lonesome little patch of sunshine found itself, quite by accident, in the House of Representatives. The orderlies walked round it, inspected it, gathered together in solemn consultation about it, and finally drew down a blind, and shut it out, while one by one members assembled in their places, all ready "to do such dreadful business as the day would fear to look on."

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act III, scene ii, lines 379-81.

The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005).

To tell you the truth, the whole truth, and almost nothing but the truth, the above-mentioned business was, in the main, rather unexciting. I'll explain why later on. But during the transaction of the mere ordinary affairs of the day, an amusing little incident cropped up which served to demonstrate the great gulf fixed between M.P.'s and mere mortals. It appears that while members are allowed to cross the lobbies with their hats in place, and to test the truth of the time-worn old theory that cigarette ash is good for crimson carpets, strangers within the Parliamentary gates are liable at any moment to be accosted and commanded, in no uncertain tone, to "Take off that hat!"

The consequence is that the public, which comes to wonder and admire, goes away with a cold in its head and angry passions rising in its heart. Mr. Holland and Mr. Fraser—those two true and much-tried comrades at arms—arose and pleaded the cause of the public with almost tragic earnestness.

Fraser queried "the orders issued in regard to visitors to the lobbies of the House. I understand, though I do not know from whom the orders emanated, that this year, as last session, when visitors come to the House to see members of Parliament, they are generally informed, sometimes in a peremptory manner, that they must remove their hats. I submit that the average resident of the Dominion approaches the House in the light that it is a public building. He has no thought—in fact, none of us have—about the propriety or etiquette of removing hats" (Hansard 206: 245). Holland commented that an MP "can go through the lobbies with his hat on, and no objection is taken. If any rule is to apply, I submit it ought to apply to everybody" (Hansard 206: 245).

Now, my remedy is this (if Mr. Holland was really a man of ingenuity he would have thought of it himself): Let all the public who have come to see the sights (and they are many) of Parliament, and departed therefrom with all the preliminary symptoms of whooping-cough, assemble in the galleries on a certain night, and, at a given signal, sneeze, and keep on sneezing. In time they would wear down the stoutest opposition.

By the way, as most of you really ought to know, the procedure when a question of importance (or unimportance) is put to the House is for every member to orally proclaim himself either a sheep or a goat—or, in Parliamentary terms, an "Aye" or a "No." When first I came to the House, I expected to hear every question put by the Speaker responded to with a hearty "Aye, aye, Sir." To my surprise and disappointment, the Speaker merely put his question and announced, "The Ayes have it," without any apparent sign of assent or dissent from the benches. Since then, I have been watching very carefully to see whether I could discover just exactly how members let the Speaker into the secret of their inmost ideas on the question he puts, and I think I've found them out. If a member means "Aye" he strokes his beard, fingers his moustache, or—if he has neither of those convenient appendages—twirls his scalplock. If, on the other hand, he means "No," he dangles his watch chain. The watch chain maketh the politician.

Cf. the proverbial "clothes make the man" (Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable).

This is really too much of a bad thing. I must, without further delay, explain to you why I sit here talking nonsense, instead of explaining the important and interesting affairs of state with which Parliament didn't occupy itself this afternoon. You must know that, on the occasion of the debate on the Address-in-Reply (yes, they are still slogging away at that poor old Address-in-Reply), every member is granted the privilege of talking for a whole hour upon any subject which happens to occur to him: and every Labour member does—to the bitter end. Mr. Monteith did so this afternoon.

See Hansard 206: 247-53.

There are three sizes in Parliamentarians—great men, large men, and very little men indeed—Mr. Monteith is a large man;"And most amazingly immenseIs his complete self-confidence—Which some might call conceit."

Cf. C. J. Dennis, "The Swanks of Gosh," lines 33-37.

The Glugs of Gosh (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1917).

Once fairly—or unfairly—started, there was no stopping Mr. Monteith. I, personally, tried auto-suggestion, telepathy and hypnotism, but without any apparent success.

Autosuggestion involved training the unconcious mind in order to influence one's behaviour. It was a theory proposed by Emile Coué, author of Self Mastery through Conscious Autosuggestion (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1922). See also the columns for 22 July 1925, 23 July 1925 and 7 August 1925.

You know, I think nearly everyone is sorry for the Liberal Party of to-day. They have so much to talk about, and nothing whatever to say. Mr. Thomson, member for Wallace, made a really fine speech all about Southland, and Milford Sound, and beauty spots (geographical ones, I mean), and so forth[.]

Thomson commented "I had been over the district previously, but on this occasion I saw parts that I had never seen before, and I unhesitatingly say that we have scenery there that is unequalled in any part of the world" (Hansard 206: 260).

"I thought," I said to a lady who sat at my right hand and kept the bridge with me,

Cf. Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Horatius,” lines 245-48.

Herminius’s name had been invoked in a parliamentary context elsewhere: Banjo Paterson’s “The Dauntless Three” (1906) draws on the Macaulay poem to satirise the political manoeuvrings of Sir Albert John Gould (a former senator and “Horatius” in Paterson’s poem), James Thomas Walker (a senator in the first Commonwealth Parliament who was also a relative of Paterson’s) and Edward Davis Millen, another senator in the first Commonwealth Parliament, who is dubbed “Herminius” in Paterson’s poem about the Liberals’ attempt to defend themselves against the Labor Party. Interestingly, the tag “bold Herminius” which Hyde uses appears in the Paterson poem, not the Macaulay one, although she is clearly familiar with the latter. See also the columns for 17 July 1925 and 22 July 1925.

She shook a sagacious head. "There are such things as general elections," she said. "Oh, I see," I replied, "and such people as constituents who like to see their old home town mentioned in the paper?" "Exactly," she said, and with a disdainful sweep of her gown, arose, and left the Gallery. After a moment, I decided to follow her; Mr. Monteith had a look in his eye (the larboard one), which betokened worse to come—possibly another speech.

Really, such a number of totally unprecedented things happened yesterday that I hardly know where to begin, and certainly won't know when to leave off. To begin with, a sword-of-Damoclesish

The expression "the sword of Damocles" comes from classical mythology. In order to point out the precariousness of life and status, Dionysus suspended a sword, hanging by a single hair, above Damocles's head. The phrase is used to indicate a threat that is always present.

On a previous occasion, as perhaps you'll remember, our old friend Mr. Monteith made charges against the Legislative Council amounting in substance to the alarming statement that this country, in paying for the board and keep of its Legislative Councillors, is simply supporting a coterie of modernised Rip Van Winkles, in fairly well-gilded idleness. So yesterday afternoon I went up to the Legislative Council with the sole aim of seeing, if I could, whether things were quite so awfully bad as all that. My opinion—I stand subject to correction, as Mr. Holland so often rightly says—is that the Legislative Council is more efficient, if less noisy, than the House of Representatives.

Let's take a glance at the Council so much in question, as they sit taking their ease (and perhaps an occasional after-dinner nap) in their necessarily capacious red plush chairs. One's first impression is that Mr. Monteith's statement, for once, was all too true. The Legislative Council seems, at a cursory glance, to be a Parliamentary backwater in which gallant old ships, too ancient for active service and too honourable for the scrap-heap, ride securely at anchor—dreaming, perhaps, of their wild life on the Parliamentary ocean wave. This, as I said before, is merely a first impression.

What the Legislative Council really represents is a quarantine station for new Bills, which are there detained in durance vile

Imprisonment or confinement (Oxford English Dictionary).

The atmosphere of the two Houses is entirely different. In one—the Upper House—the members talk and act together like old cronies; they treat each other's little weaknesses with tolerant sympathy. One might almost term them a Mutual Admiration Society. In the House of Representatives, members—particularly members of a certain well-known party—spend about one-third of their time working, and the remainder in endeavouring—colloquially speaking—to "do each other in the eye." If the Legislative Council would adopt this charmingly reasonable policy, they could no doubt look quite as busy as the House of Representatives.

But one must admit that the Legislative Council harbours many quaint old customs, and not a few quaint old customers, if I may so irreverently term them. Yesterday afternoon, for instance, was the occasion of the election of the Chairman of Committees—a most important personage who sees that the members behave themselves when the House goes into committee, and the Speaker into—well, I don't just know where.

See Hansard 206: 290-91.

Once—just for a moment—something (we'll call it the wind) opened the door just the teeniest fraction of an inch and—well, I couldn't help seeing inside, could I? Do you want to know what I saw? Well, come closer, and I'll tell you. I saw a dignified old gentleman with a pointed beard (only one member was, so far as I could see, totally devoid of what rude little boys call "beaver"), lying back in his red plush chair, perfectly at amity with the world—which means, in plain English, that he was dozing. Nevertheless the Council successfully put through the business of its day, which is usually more that the Lower House can claim.

It was while finding my way back to the House of Representatives that I lost myself, and would probably have been there still, too proud to scream for help and too scared to knock at one of the Bluebeard's chamber-doors, if a little lady with knitting-needles hadn't discovered me and helped me to track down an orderly who had known his way about the House before we were born. When at last I reached my destination, Mr. O'Brien, the hon. member for West Coast, was in the act of descending upon the Government like a wolf on the fold.

Cf. Lord Byron, "The Destruction of Semnacherib," (1815), line 1.

The Complete Poetical Works, ed. Jerome J. McGann, vol. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). See also the columns for 24 July 1925, 31 July 1925 and 1 October 1928.

I'm not going to tell you all he said. From the most interesting part of his speech, which dealt with hardship among the pioneers of the West Coast—a subject no true New Zealander could fail to take some interest in—he suddenly switched off on to the well-worn trail of the fusion discussion.

In the early part of his address O'Brien told the Minister for Mines "I will introduce him to some old-age pensioners who have been since the early 'sixties' on the West Coast, and who are not satisfied with the conditions that the Government has placed upon them; I could also introduce him to some widows, and show him some cases of extreme hardship that for very many years has been foreign to my district…" (Hansard 206: 321).

Well, we'll leave Mr. O'Brien to his fusion, and proceed with the next speaker, Mr. Harris, of the Reform benches. He made what one might term a reasonable speech—that is, he appeared willing to reason quietly and sanely with the Opposition, instead of spending his crowded hour throwing and receiving bricks, and getting, in general, no forrader.

Further forward. "Forrader" is a jocular dialect form (Oxford English Dictionary).

Plaintive voice from the Labour-Socialist benches: If 'e lives long enough to get it!

Hyde might have noted an interjection that was not recorded in Hansard; the comment that is recorded there is "[t]o the favoured few," by Smith (Hansard 206: 334).

I think I've told you about the little bell that, at a given signal, tinkles a reminder to members that they have gone on just as far and as long as the Speaker is prepared to let thm? You should have heard Mr. Harris quicken his speech when that bothering little tinkle rang in his ears. He had to crowd an appeal for help for the Auckland commercial travellers, in their endeavour to buy blankets for five thousand needy people, into the space of five minutes. He did his best.

See Hansard 206: 336-37.

Mr. Jordan of the Labour Party, took up the tale where Mr. Harris had been forced to leave it. To me, at least, Mr. Jordan was the pleasant surprise of the evening. Before ten minutes of his appointed time had elapsed, Mr. Holland was gazing at Mr. Fraser with a "can you see what I can see?" look in his face. Below are just a few of the things that Mr. Jordan, alone of his party, said. (N.B.—From his own benches, at least, there was very little of that loud acclamation customary when a Labour member addresses the shrinking House.)

"If we can find fault with men, at least let us find something good to say about them."

Hyde generalises here from a specific statement Jordan made about employees of the Glen Afton mine: "If…we find fault with the men, let us put on record that they have some good points" (Hansard 206: 340).

"The interests of Capital and Labour are general."

Jordan related a story about meeting an American businessman who "informed me that in the United States there is a very decided attempt being made to bring capital and labour together. They are regarded as having similar interests" (Hansard 206: 342).

Well, it's nice to find that at least one of them agrees with us, and still more pleasant to find that he will risk his party's displeasure by saying so. Peace upon earth and good-will to all men,

Cf. Luke 2 v. 14.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears:

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, act III, scene ii, line 74.

The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005).

Well, let's begin at the beginning—though really, that's such an ordinary sort of thing to do. It's much more fun to begin somewhere about the middle, or right at the end, and then slowly work one's way back. That's what our Labour-Socialists do. To start off (I suppose we'll have to sooner or later), I arrived half an hour in advance of Mr. Speaker, and had to sit all alone in the cold, cold gallery, contemplating empty chairs.

Seeing that there was no immediate business requiring my personal attention (!), I thought out a perfectly new and feasible way of character-reading. We can uncover all the deepest, darkest, and dismalest secrets of a man's heart per medium of tea leaves, stars, palmistry, and magic crystals: why not try character-reading by chairs? For instance, there's the Speaker's chair—very tall, upright and dignified, with its stiff back of blue leather stamped with a golden crest. An impressive but standoffish sort of chair: not the kind in which dear old gentlemen with three chins, no laps, and the habit of dozing off after dinner would really feel at home. Then there are the chairs—or benches, as I believe it is more correct to term them—appertaining to the various members. The most remarkable thing about them (the chairs, not the members), is their excessive roominess. They are chairs built for comfort and not for speed, and, of course, there are the chairs in our own little gallery. Well, early Victorian ladies who like to sit primly upright with their toes turned in Might possibly feel comfortable in them. If they—the ladies in question—could stand hoop skirts and whalebone upholstery, I daresay that hard, cold, unyielding benches, a little over a foot wide, would be more or less in their line. But as for the rest of us….

At this point Mr. Holland interrupted my maiden meditations.

William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, act II, scene i, lines 161-64.

The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005). See also the column for 30 June 1925.

Mr. Lee (we've talked about him before, haven't we? You remember—the one with the switchback and the earnest air) solemnly arose and announced his intention of inquiring into the matter of free strawberries and cream, not to mention occasional free holidays, granted by designing ministers to children just before election time.

These comments are not recorded in Hansard, but were noted by members of the Press Gallery; see “Looking Down: Notes from the Gallery,” Christchurch Sun, 13 July 1925, p. 6.

Mr. Lee was, so to speak, the entree of the day's political dinner. Mr. Langstone, also of the Labour-Socialist benches, formed the piece de resistance; politeness forbids me to add that he was just a little tough. His speech was crammed with withdrawals of offensive statements, and substitution of others that sounded more courteous, even if they weren't.

See for example Langstone's comments in Hansard 206: 364-65. At one point the Speaker ruled that "[t]he honourable gentleman's language is getting too strong, I think" (Hansard 206: 365).

It's rather hard to devote one's full attention to Labour when one's whole soul is crying out for lemon drinks, but I'll tell you as much as I can remember. Mr. Langstone has an odd little habit of standing on tiptoe and then suddenly coming down to earth. His speeches are like that, too. He started off by roundly abusing Sir Maui Pomare—nobody knew just what about

Langstone said that "[t]here is no honourable member in this House who uses unusual phrases more than the Hon. the Minister for Health" (Hansard 206: 364).

Possibly you, in your innocence, imagine that Mr. Langstone was going to let the Liberals off scot-free? Not in the least. He referred to them as "wounded worms wriggling out of the Chamber."

Langstone commented "I think that the most pitiable sight I have seen in the Liberal party—to use the phraseology of a member who once sat in this House—crawling like wounded worms on the face of politics, and wriggling themselves out of the Chamber to escape facing an issue" (Hansard 206: 365).

Mr. Langstone's views on taxation are, to say the least of it, deliciously original. So quaint and refreshing! Hear, oh fathers and mothers of the city, a gem which I took verbatim from his discourse. "I would love to see the day when every married man and every father of a family in the city was in the proud position of paying income tax."

This remark is not quite verbatim according to Hansard, which records Langstone as saying "I wish I lived to see the day when every married man, every father of a family, was in the position of being an income-tax payer" (Hansard 206: 366).

I think we'll leave Mr. Langstone here. I haven't, of course, told you half he said. He called the Government wretches, vultures, and, worst of all, Tories.

Langstone referred to the joint-stock companies as "vultures" (Hansard 206: 369) and ended by saying that "the worst visitation that can afflict suffering humanity…is a plague not of scorpions, pestilences, famines, or war, but a plague of unjust governments and Tory rulers…" (Hansard 206: 370).

Dearie me! how time—and space—does fly, once one gets talking. I meant to tell you about Mr. Girling's speech, which, coming from a member of the much-abused Government, sounded strangely humane. For instance, he stood up and appealed for better conditions in our schools, our railways, and our child welfare system—which sounded as if the Government isn't so blind and unfeeling after all.

See Hansard 206: 370-76.

Now, what I want to know is this. Why, on two consecutive afternoons, have two Labour members, two Reform members, and no Liberals spoken? Do the Liberals save themselves up for the evening session, or is it just that they have nothing to say for themselves? Anyhow, for days they've sat silent, brooding over their order papers, and the mere public are beginning to wonder what mischief they are hatching. Even Mr. Wilford has been entirely silent—as if struck dumb by a merciful dispensation of Providence—ever since his return to the House. Surely Mr. Wilford remembers that only live wires can fuse?

I'd like to tell you about Mr. McKeen's very interesting speech on housing—in which, so he tells us, he has the Prime Minister's sympathy—but I'm afraid we'll have to hold it over till to-morrow.

McKeen informed the House that he had taken the Prime Minister on a tour of Wellington houses to make his point and that the Prime Minister "expressed himself very bluntly about the whole conditions [sic] of the place" (Hansard 206: 381).

I move that this assembly adjourn for morning tea. The ayes have it by an enormous majority. Messieurs et Mesdames,

Dominion: Madames.

I really hadn't, at the time, the faintest intention of darkening the doors of the House of Representatives again—at least, not until that fine week-end which Mr. Bates so kindly promised us had somewhat restored my mental stamina.

Daniel Bates was Director of the New Zealand Meteorological Office from 1909-27. See also the column for 4 July 1925.

"Go where?" I replied, languid but listening—you know the style.

"In there," he answered, indicating the door of the House of Representatives with a shaking forefinger. ["]Atmore expected to move his amendment to-night, but they sprung a surprise on him, and called him up this afternoon."

"And what, may I ask," I said, "is Atmore?"

"Independent Liberal, mover of second amendment to Address-in-Reply, member for Nelson," he rattled off, viewing me with a reproachful eye.

"It's all right," I said, "if he's a Liberal I'm going. I've waited to hear a Liberal say something since—since I was a child."

"Independent Liberal," he reminded me.

"Oh, yes," I replied, "I've heard that one before."

Inside the Chamber, usually somnolent members were sitting bolt-upright, galvanised into activity. From the expression on most of their faces, I should say that they found the process exceedingly painful. And over on the Liberal benches, a man with a Sydney Cartonish

Sydney Carton is a character in Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities.

We have listened (by "we" I mean the general occupants of the Ladies' Gallery), to a great deal of mysterious humbug about the Fusion question. But we don't know yet whether anybody—except ourselves, and we don't count—wants Fusion, or, if not, why not. Mr. Atmore's speech dealt with Fusion, and dealt with it in a straight-forward way. There is such a thing as touching off a skyrocket in mistake for a squib. (At least, it's frequently done in Parliament, where everyone works in the dark). Mr. Atmore is a political skyrocket. It was rather a pity that his fellow-members compelled him gently but firmly to come down to earth. He made an impressive spectacle 'way up there in the air.

Mr. Atmore thinks that we want Fusion—that we have, in fact, come to the stage where we are rudely and most unconstitutionally demanding it.

Atmore noted that the fusion question "was put before the people when the present Prime Minister told them he was in favour of the Reformers and the Liberals coming together, and that he would give his delegates a free hand for that purpose. The formation of a National party was again placed before the people when the leader of the Opposition publicly stated his belief in its necessity, and it has been placed before the people many times by individual Reform speakers during their election campaigns" (Hansard 206: 402).

If Mr. Atmore is a good speech-maker, Mr. Fraser is a better speech-breaker. For fully an hour he poured cold milk-and-water on Mr. Atmore's flame of enthusiasm.

See Hansard 206: 411-19.

Our young Labour-Socialist friend Mr. Lee took up the tale of woe (perhaps Mr. Atmore interpreted it as a tale of "Whoa"), where a beneficent

Dominion: benificent.

None of the Labour-Socialist Party can resist the temptation to have an occasional little fling at the expense of the native-born New Zealander. "Rabbits, blackberries, and thistles," stated Mr. Lee, "were born in New Zealand."

Lee remarked that "[i]t is true that the honourable member was born in New Zealand, and it is true, Mr. Speaker, that I was also born in New Zealand, and I am very proud of New Zealand; but it is true that also here in New Zealand rabbits and blackberries and thistles, and other noxious weeds and vermin, are born, and we have to take the good with the bad—it is something we cannot help" (Hansard 206: 421).

The bell rang at last—mercifully. With much pomp and dignity the House arose, feeling that, however indiscreet Mr. Atmore may have been, members as a whole had been successful in committing themselves to nothing. That's the great game in the House, you know. Everybody says everything they can think of, but if any other member successfully grasps a phrase or a sentence which might pin his colleague down to an absolutely definite opinion—well, that colleague is "out."

Mr. Atmore, sitting back in his chair, looked just a little old and tired. It's a sad old world for the enthusiast, my masters.

The phrase "my masters" is an echo of Kipling. See for example the story "Railway Reform in Great Britain" in The Collected Works of Rudyard Kipling, vol. 23 (New York: Ams Press, 1970). See also the column for 29 August 1925.

You see that headline up there—the one at the top, in the fat black letters? Well, to-day it is going to be absolutely and literally true, which is more than one can usually say for headlines—or for what comes after them. We are going, by your leave, Messieurs, to take just one furtive peep at the House of Representatives on our way back from an exploratory expedition which will take us into every—or nearly every—nook and cranny in the entire House. It is a long and perilous journey so, again by your leave, I think we'd better gird on our sandals, seize upon our trusty staffs and depart.

I've told you all about the marble stairs and magnificent entry into the Parliamentary precincts. Well, that is quite all right for new chums—the sort of people, if you take my meaning, that one wants to impress. But down underneath the stairs, hidden by a kind of medieval archway, is an unobtrusive little revolving door—and thereby enter the initiated. They—the initiated, I mean—are obliged to wipe their shoes on the nose of a rather harassed-looking mosaic lion, who assists an equally careworn unicorn to hold up a large scroll bearing the quaint old legend Honi soit qui mal y pense.

Shame on him who thinks evil of it (Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable).

A twisty, twiny, serpentiney corridor takes us to a queer little flight of stairs which, in turn, conducts us to more corridors. Oh, the corridors in that building! They begin somewhere down in a region of Stygian

Related to the river Styx (Oxford English Dictionary). The implication is that the corridors are very dark.

Parliament is the not over-proud possessor of a most wonderful old library, with beautifully dog-eared volumes dating back to the days when everybody who was anybody talked, wrote, and dreamed in Latin or Norman-French. The library extends, or seems to extend, over about ninety-nine floors….

You know, of course, that women simply aren't recognised as part of the Parliamentary scheme of things? Well, I'll give an instance of the delightful masculine regime which woman, with her unholy passion for law and order, would probably shatter at one fell sweep

Cf. William Shakespeare, Macbeth, act IV, scene iii, lines 219-20.

The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005). The phrase has since become proverbial.

I haven't time to, but I really must tell you about the little twisty staircase that leads out on the roof, into the starlight and the quiet night. Sometimes, in the heat of debate, members wander out there, and take long, deep, cool puffs at their cigars, and look at the harbour lights, and dream … and then the bell rings, and they slide down the banisters

Dominion: bannisters.

She wore an evening dress that was just once removed from the crinoline, and the tiniest slippers, and little nestling bunches of curls. She used, just once a year, on fete nights, to dance in the big ballroom that was once the pride of the old-time Governors' House, adjacent to the old Parliament Building, and now linked up with the new. And I can tell you that the swaying of her fan, and the turn of her ankle under her soft, clinging dress, and the way that the light of the great chandeliers was reflected in her eyes, was a thing for you modern young men to dream about. Then, one day, the old Parliament House was burned down, and they turned the great ballroom of Government House, with its lights and its polished floor, into a kind of make-believe Parliament Chamber, in which ladies had no part nor lot.

Cf. Acts 8 v. 21.

Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God.

This really won't do at all, at all. Let's talk of something absolutely materialistic. I simply must tell you how, on my way back, I took a wary peep into the lions'—I mean the Labour Party's—den, and saw Mr. Monteith hurriedly conceal something which I took to be the very small remains of a Cabinet Minister who had, in a fatal moment of absentmindedness, wandered that way unarmed. Mr. Fraser, on my approach, hastily swallowed what resembled a large bone button—the sort that comes off the waistcoats of highly important personages. I really hope it did not disagree with him. Happily, he was quite himself again by debating time.

There are hundreds of old customs that I'd like to tell you about, if only I had time. Do you know, for instance, that across the door of the House of Representatives is a bar past which even the King dare not come—that is, not unless he puts on false whiskers and shaves the crown of his head, thereby disguising himself as a bona fide member? And were you aware that Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Speaker and all the little Speakers are obliged to live on the premises? No wonder the Speaker looks so—so kind of unbending. I looked out for Mrs. Speaker's clothes-line, but couldn't see it anywhere. That House is full of dark secrets.

There's one room marked "Strictly Private" into which the public must not come. I was told, in a reverential whisper, that it was the Parliamentary Holy of Holies—the inner sanctum where they withdraw to commune with their deepest thoughts. From it issued forth a faint clicking—probably a typewriter—but which sounded to my inexperienced ears oddly like the musical chinking of billiard balls. Impossible—quite impossible—wasn't it?

Well, I think this is a good place to leave you. Most people would prefer it to the labyrinthine corridors, anyhow. Maybe we'll go exploring again on yet another rainy day. P.S.—About that peep into the House of Representatives that I promised you. Well, I looked through the keyhole and saw—what do you think? Mr. Atmore! He was addressing the House and the Labour-Socialists were not enjoying it a bit. I think that's all for to-day.

Hyde is still referring to the debate on confidence on 10 July. She might be pointing to Atmore's second address, which began in the evening session; see Hansard 206: 440-47.

You know, or at least you really ought to know, the creaky, squeaky, sacrilegious feeling which hovers around one as one tiptoes into church halfway through the sermon, and hastily buries one's nose in a convenient prayer book? That's how I felt yesterday afternoon on entering the Ladies' Gallery nearly five minutes late. All the other ladies stopped clicking their knitting-needles (and their tongues) and regarded me as if wondering just who, what, or why I really was. And I almost felt I saw the Sergeant-at-Arms shake his Mace at me. He was right in the middle of depositing it on the table, and I nearly put him off his game.

By the way, permit me to digress for a moment. Everyone in Parliament does it, and I don't see why there should be any distinction made in disfavour of women. Do you know that if the Mace—a sort of heavy-weight fairy wand affair, with nubbly gold coronets on top—were by any mischance to disappear the entire business of the State would come to a full stop, and all the members would have to adjourn to reading-rooms and sit around thinking out schemes of decoration for the thief, while the affairs of the country went to rack and ruin?

It sounds incredible, but it's perfectly true. That is one of the reasons—and they are legion—why the average visitor to Parliament is politely but definitely watched over and warded off from all the inmost chambers and corridors of the House. It isn't that the Powers That Be regard us as mild lunatics who might, if given the opportunity, run about the place carving our names on the legs of the Speaker's Chair, nor yet that they suspect us of being Bolsheviks with bombs and bunches of dynamite concealed all over our persons. The plain truth of it is that they're never quite sure just which harmless-looking little stranger is an American souvenir hunter waiting his opportunity to make off with the Mace. So the next time you visit Parliament, if an orderly says to you, ever so politely, "This way, madam," don't feel hurt about it. Just persuade him to feel

Dominion: fell.

When, having settled myself in the gallery, I proceeded to look around me, I perceived Mr. Parry, celebrated as the most docile, orderly, and peaceful member of the Labour benches, fondly clasping a photograph on which were depicted several ribs and a cross section of the internal anatomy of something that might possibly have passed as a human being. At first I thought that I had stumbled on one more of Labour's little interludes with skeletons in cupboards, but someone next to me whispered, in a strictly confidential undertone, "Parry's hardy annual," and on looking at the Order Paper I learned just what had befallen the unfortunate House.

See Hansard 206: 460-63 and 206: 474-82 for debate on Parry's bill.

You might think that a Bill, good or bad, visits the House once, is thought over, talked over, worked over, and finally accepted or rejected. That just shows your charming innocence. Once upon a time, I believed the same myself. Ah, me! A Bill may be forcibly thrown out of the House half-a-dozen times running, but at the next session it bobs up again, at its mover cheerfully addresses the House in some such words as "Well, seriously now, you fellows, what about this Bill?" I gathered that Mr. Parry has been bringing this particular Bill in and out of the House since the oldest Parliamentary inhabitant was a child at his mother's knee. Centenarians with long white whiskers, blue jeans, and lumbago, grow reminiscent over their mugs of beer, and say, in faraway tones, "Oo, aay, Oi mind me o' the days when Parry first brung in 'is Bill." And nobody believes them.

About the same time as the enthusiastic gardener searches for the first primrose, and the thrush for the first worm in sight to feed his newly-arrived family, Mr. Parry's Bill doth appear. It is all about miners' phthisis.

A lung condition common in miners.

A Bill isn't allowed to pursue its uninterrupted course through the House. If it were, it might possibly have a chance of getting somewhere. Right in the middle of the proceedings, Mr. Coates arose and announced that he wanted to tell the House all about everything.

Coates interrupted Parry to declare "I desire to make two statements. I am sorry to interrupt the debate, but it is rather important that they should be made now" (Hansard 206: 463).

Do you know, I, in my innocence, always thought that all you had to do to get fusion was to agree about it. But it seems that both parties can want fusion but they can't agree as to the time to adopt it. Our members did at their christenings—I mean their elections—promise and vow to perform all sorts

Dominion: sort.

"It's strange that each little girl or boyWho's born into this world aliveIs either a little LiberalOr else a little Conservative."

Gilbert and Sullivan, "When All Night Long a Chap Remains," from Ioanthe, act II, lines 11-16.

The Complete Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan, intro. and ed. Ian Bradley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

In the course of your long and adventurous career, you may quite possibly have noticed the grass that grows all around the Parliamentary Buildings. I don't mean the evergreen variety which springs up under members' feet, but that which, with the assistance of a little clover and an occasional dandelion, forms the charming lawns in the Parliamentary grounds. There are many outstanding (or sitting out) qualities that might appeal to one in that grass, but what really does strike a sympathetic chord of fellow-feeling in my heart is its greenness. That grass is the only thing within sight of Parliament that is anything like as green as I am.

For example, I really thought, after hearing the first reading of Mr. Parry's Bill, that the House must have settled down more or less comfortably to transact, or, at least to talk business, and as a natural consequence of this, I supposed that the poor old Address-in-Reply was either dead and buried, or that the great personage who is deputed to attend to such affairs had already "signed it and sealed it, all pale as a ghost, and sent it away by the tuppeny post."

Thomas Ingolsby [Richard Harris Barham], "The Tragedy," lines 77-78.

The Ingolsby Legends, or Mirth and Marvels (London: J. M. Dent, 1922).

Now, before we proceed any further, let's endeavour, to the best of our ability, to clear up a little point of disorder. When I say "this evening" I mean this evening—the one I'm at present half-way through, and still without my duty done. But by the time you read these notes, this evening will be yesterday evening. My to-day is your yesterday, my to-morrow is your to-day, and our hereafters—no, dash it all, that isn't what I was going to say when I started. Anyhow, it's all perfectly simple, and can be worked out by algebra. You understand this: when I say "to-day" I mean "yesterday." It might be simpler to say "yesterday" straight out, but it sort of throws me out of focus. Now, let's on with the dance.

I believe that I've told you how, every now and again, a member rises and gives warning that he fully intends to ask some Minister an awkward question at some day of reckoning to come. Indeed, the eyebrows of our Labour-Socialist members are in many instances curved into a perpetual note of interrogation—just as their voices are tuned to a note of exclamation. Well, I never quite knew what happened to these questions—whether they were just written down and hidden away in the souls of the members who knew they'd have to answer them one day, or whether they were printed and circulated under the form of amusing conundrums for the very young. It appears that the House has a periodical Day of Judgment—I don't mean a day of bad judgment, those are always with us, but a day when each Minister, instead of sitting all snug and tight and imperturbable in his cushioned chair must rise up and give ear—and answer—to all the things that the House in general wants, and confidently expects, to know. This occasion for loud lamentation and chastening of the soul is known as Question Day. Purely by accident to-day I walked slap-bang into the middle of a Question Day.

See Hansard 206: 516-35.

I should, if I could, blush to admit it, but after the first hour or so I didn't listen to the questions. I didn't know the answers to them, and, between you and me, neither did anyone else. But you know that peculiarly vindictive pot-hole which has located itself just outside your front door, and positively refuses to go elsewhere? And you recollect how, time and time again, you have filled the air with your lamentations because your local body can't and won't supply you with wire-netting to keep your rabbits from walking off your farm and getting themselves confiscated by your scoundrelly neighbours? Well, on Question Day, your faithful M.P. rises in his place, and, in impassioned tones, points to his question on the Order Paper and asks some harassed looking Minister what the mischief he has done, and is going to do, about such outrages. And, as a general rule, the Minister sighs a little sigh and sadly admits that he'll be blessed if he knows.

I suppose, if I'd really been the stuff that heroines are made of, I'd have stayed to hear the end of those questions. But examinations—all kinds, from Customs ones to matriculation—give me cold shivers down my spine. Besides, by tacit consent, nearly all the other feminine onlookers had decided that this was an affair between members, Ministers, and, if they have any, their consciences, and silently withdrawn, leaving me all alone with a lady in a hat whose ostrich plume must, when abstracted from the parent bird, have left that unfortunate fowl stark naked. So, after a little deliberation, I decided to retreat in good order, and to call again this evening—yesterday evening, I mean—just to see what really would happen to that Address-in-Reply. So you'll excuse me for treating you to (or mistreating you with) a double-barrelled article, won't you? At the present moment, if nobody minds, I intend to withdraw for the purpose of fortifying my spirit.

Well, we might have known it, mightn't we? Known what? That the Labour-Socialists would once again start something that they couldn't finish. Another thing that the collective energies of the entire House don't seem able to finish is that Address-in-Reply. I did hope that this time, on my return from the seats of the mighty, I'd be able to say to you, "Gentlemen, the Address-in-Reply has quietly passed away. Heaven rest its soul!" But what do you think that Mr. Savage, Labour-Socialist de luxe, has gone and been and done? He has moved yet another amendment, and one which, as he himself candidly admits, hasn't the faintest chance of being carried out.

Fraser proposed an amendment "[t]hat the following words be added to the motion moved by the honourable member for Franklin: 'That this House expresses the opinion (1) that all awards of the Arbitration Court should provide for a wage at least equivalent in purchasing-power to the 1914 standard, (2) that wages and salaries in the public services, beginning immediately with salaries of £300 and under, should be restored to at least the pre-war standard, measured in purchasing-power.' I do not think, Sir, that any one in this House will say that this is an extravagant demand, and, after listening to various honourable gentlemen on the Government benches and elsewhere, I feel sure that my amendment will be carried" (Hansard 206: 542). Hyde is probably right to imply that Fraser was being facetious in his confidence about the success of the motion.

Here is the sum and substance of his amendment—that is, as far as I could make it out. Mr. Savage came (why, I don't know), from Lancashire or Aberdeen—some place like that, anyhow—and in consequence there is a kind of chestnut burr about his speeches which makes

Dominion: make.

Truth to tell, I was more interested in the Ladies' Gallery itself than in the worn, weary, and disheartened benches. For some reason or reasons unknown, the wives, daughters, stepmothers and maiden aunts of the entire House had put in their respective appearances, and those long, haunted circles of usually empty chairs were filled with life and merriment: subdued merriment, of course. By the way, to put it slangily, Penelope had nothing on the wives and families of our members.

In Greek mythology, Penelope was the wife of the hero Odysseus (Ulysses in Latin).

If I may venture to make a prophecy, when next I enter the Ladies' Gallery the Address-in-Reply will still be there, still in the same old place, awaiting the touch of a little hand, etc.

Eugene Field, "Little Boy Blue," lines 17-20.

Poems of Childhood (New York: Airmont, 1970).

And outside, the least little bit of a silver-scimitar moon cut through the edges of a cloud, and helped the big orange lamps, clustered together like bunches of golden apples, to light up a white marble palace, with dark purple sky behind it. For the moment Parliament Buildings looked just exactly like an enchanted castle straight out of a fairy tale. Well, well, well! Appearances are deceptive, aren't they?

Isn't that just like life—and even more like members of Parliament? Here, for day after day, not to say night after night, the Spartan occupants of the Ladies' Gallery have gone climbin' up dem golden

"Climbing up the Golden Stairs" is a traditional folk song. See Ira W. Ford, Traditional Music of America (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1940), pp. 283-84.

The occupants of the Ladies' Gallery this afternoon were obviously feeling the strain of their late night. I mean to say, with the exception of myself and one other, whom I immediately christened Bold Herminius, because she sat on my right hand and kept the bridge with me.

Cf. Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Horatius,” lines 245-48.

Herminius’s name had been invoked in a parliamentary context elsewhere: Banjo Paterson’s “The Dauntless Three” (1906) draws on the Macaulay poem to satirise the political manoeuvrings of Sir Albert John Gould (a former senator and “Horatius” in Paterson’s poem), James Thomas Walker (a senator in the first Commonwealth Parliament who was also a relative of Paterson’s) and Edward Davis Millen, another senator in the first Commonwealth Parliament, who is dubbed “Herminius” in Paterson’s poem about the Liberals’ attempt to defend themselves against the Labor Party. Interestingly, the tag “bold Herminius” which Hyde uses appears in the Paterson poem, not the Macaulay one, although she is clearly familiar with the latter. See also the columns for 8 July 1925 and 22 July 1925

Sometimes, you know, the House of Representatives is like that. Perhaps the faint light that filters through the stained glass dome, precariously perched on top of the building, heightens an effect of unreality. The queer little figures down below, with their stiff shirts, stiff bows and stiffer speeches (Labour says that the ones about finance are the stiffest of all—to swallow) seem just players on a stage

Cf. William Shakespeare, As You Like It, act II, scene vii, lines 139-40.

The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005).

Rather an interesting little incident cropped up at question time to-day, when Mr. Langstone, of all people, gave notice that he intended to ask some unfortunate Minister questions about a petrified man, who was discovered far gone in intoxication—no, I mean ossification—in a cave at Arapuni.

This comment is not recorded in Hansard, but does appear in “Today’s Proceedings,” Evening Post, 16 July 1925, p. 6.

So next time you see Mr. Langstone gazing across at Mr. Wilford with a rather peculiar look in his weather eye, don't think for a moment that he's entertaining unkindly thoughts about the Leader of the Opposition. Mr. Langstone is merely thinking of a petrified figure.

This afternoon (you'll remember what I told you about my to-day being your yesterday) was the scene—in spots a most interesting scene—of the election of the members of Select Committees.

See Hansard 206: 578-79.

There are several rather interesting little forms (and many still more interesting figures) for one to observe when the House goes into committee, as it did this afternoon. First of all the Speaker adjusts his wig, tucks up his petticoats, and leaves the assembly to the care of a hardly less august gentleman—the Chairman of Committees. In the absence of the Speaker, the Mace is carefully concealed under the table. Funny—beg pardon, I mean imposing, isn't it?

After the election of the various committees, Messages—in reality drafts of Acts to be submitted to the House–are announced as coming from the Governor-General.

See for example the Repayment of Public Debt Bill (Hansard 206: 582).

You know those crisp little financial dispatches daily inserted in the newspapers by Great Big Business Men, with the object of persuading a guileless public that the market for something or other is firm, quiet, or aged and infirm, as the case may or mayn't be? Don't you think that it would be something in the nature of what one might term a wheeze if we were to adopt the same idea in this column, and hang out a large "Nothing doing" notice on the exceedingly rare afternoons when nobody in the House did or said anything worthy of our distinguished notice?

To-day, for example, our dispatch might read as follows: "Market quiet: a welcome change," as usually our friends on the altogether too extreme Left make it dreadfully noisy.

But we are playing the entr'acte before the overture; anybody would think, to listen to us, that we were Socialists. Let us proceed. We entered the Ladies' Gallery hand in hand—no, no, that won't do at all! With a little more provocation, you'll be taking me for an up-to-date version of the Siamese twins. I entered the gallery, and, naturally enough, sat down. There's no harm in that, was there? And lo, as I sate, a mighty voice issued forth from somewhere down in the roomy and gloomy interior of the Chamber, and it lifted itself up and cried unto all men, "Mister Speaker!"

The phrasing echoes the Bible but does not appear to come from a particular passage.

Talking of game—the game, at this particular session varied from rabbit to wild pig. Enough to make even an epicure sit up and take notice. But we will come to that anon. At first (we blush like a peony to admit it), we entertained an altogether unworthy suspicion that we were going to be bored. But as time wore on, this impression wore off. The business in hand (well in hand, for once), was the report of a commission on deteriorated lands in various parts of the country.

See Hansard 206: 612-33.

You know, we townies are, on the whole, frightfully unsophisticated. We cherish the idea (yes, we do, and it's no earthly use our denying it), that a farm is a place where perfectly sweet little yellow chickens run about in the sun, and live on a staple diet of worms; where milkmaids all forlorn (until the stable hand gets up) milk cows with crumpled horns,

Cf. "The House that Jack Built," lines 22-23.

The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, ed. Iona Opie and Peter Opie, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

Do you know that each little farm in the backblocks is, in its own small and unprotected way, a beleaguered fortress? All around it, silent, menacing and unconquerable, are the black forces of the virgin forest, and noxious weeds of villainous depravity, which will, if for one year the guardians relax their vigilance, swallow up our lonely little outposts of a civilisation to come.

See for example McLeod's statement that "[o]wing to the steepness of the land, and the prevalence of gorges, the timber and roots will eventually decay to such a point that large areas will slip into the river-beds and creeks, and make the land impossible from a farming point of view, besides doing great damage to land lower down the streams which may be valuable land" (Hansard 206: 612).

But you mustn't think just because

that the local bodies of the various country districts of New Zealand are all corpses. Far from it. The present Commission on Deteriorated Lands is probably in some part the result of their intense agitation. And the commission didn't spend its time wandering vaguely around tilled fields, poking its fingers into the ribs of prize pigs and remarking "Haw." Their report touched on everything from better roading to experimental farms. Several rather interesting little minor points also bristled up. Mr. Masters, for instance, referred to the prevalence of appallingly wild pigs in Taranaki, and stated that the Government's own forestry reserves were breeding grounds for such unscrupulous marauders.

Masters pointed out that "[w]e have forestry reserves by the thousands of acres spread about in little patches here and there, and these are the places which are the breeding-grounds for the wild pigs in the district" (Hansard 206: 619).

Never tell me again that pigs is pigs, and, as such, are totally unreasoning creatures. On the contrary. They know perfectly well that the Government is laying for them (isn't there a bonus of one whole shilling offered for every one of their snouts?), and, as a natural sequence, they take sanctuary in the very places where plain John Brown, along o' his shot gun, must not go to earn an honest shilling.

Masters confirmed that this was the bounty paid to hunters (Hansard 206: 619).

After all this serious, not to say blood-curdling talk, one hates to come down to mere frivolity. But somewhere among my disreputable ancestry is located a lady who was very, very fond of her pigs and her praties. It is she, then, who whispers to me that it would be the making of this bit of a country of ours if we could entice all these wild pigs, now going to waste and ultimate destruction, into properly-managed pig-sties, and there, by means of suitable food and simple kindliness, win them back to the vegetarian habits of their ancestors. Just think of all the perfectly good ham, bacon, and sucking-pig that these now worthless outlaws could be made to represent.

This was (the little story above) originally intended to be all for the present. But later on in the evening we chanced to be passing the House, some fatal fascination lured us within, and we gave ear to bits of the Kauri Gum Control Bill, which really, in the interests of patriotism, you shouldn't miss.

See Hansard 206: 633-43.

By the way, curious facts sometimes crop up when commercial cards are on the table. Before the war—before we, in our hopeless ignorance, ever dreamed that the war was on the horizon—a fair amount of our kauri gum was exported to Germany, and used in the manufacture of high explosives. We all know what those high explosives were used to manufacture—slaughter and death. But, after all, we "got one back on them." Our exporters, putting pleasure before business, had skilfully sold Germany a highly inferior and almost useless brand of kauri gum.

Murdoch noted that "[i]n the past we have sent considerable quantities of gum to America and also to Britain, and we are told that during the war period much of our inferior gum was sent to Germany for the manufacture of high explosives" (Hansard 206: 635).

In my perfectly natural anxiety to know whether Mr. Wilford, as the Leader of our brand-new National Party, was sporting a red, white, and blue bandana, I arrived at the House while proceedings were still at that stage when troops of orderlies, under the expert supervision of the Sergeant-at-Arms, flick specks of dust from the shining surface of the Mace. Having learned from the Labour Socialist Party that one should never, under any circumstances, waste one's own or anyone else's time, I wiled away the hours (anyhow, they seemed hours) by formulating a theory.

I've told you (or maybe you've learned by bitter experience) all about that objectionable little bell which buzzingly announces to members that their hour is upon them? Well, look'ee here: don't you think that it would be much more in keeping with the general atmosphere of the House if, at the appointed time, one of those mysterious little carved doors was to fly open, admitting a gentleman in Oriental costume, who would march solemnly round the House, emitting warning noises on a big brass dinner-gong. That, I venture to say, would fetch 'em. Or if the dinner-gong, alone and unaided, wasn't enough to awake members from their well-earned repose, its bearer might be followed about by a lieutenant with a sheep-bell tied round his neck. What Parliament really needs is, among other things, somebody with an inventive mind who would take everything in hand and disorganise it with a view to developing its more picturesque possibilities. I don't say that, if sufficient temptation were placed in my way, I mightn't consider taking on the job myself. First of all I'd make all the orderlies get into the correct attire of Beef-eaters, and then … however, I suppose we'd better wait till the time comes. The Labour Socialist Party might make the idea a substantial plank in their platform at the next general election. I'm sure that they'd enjoy seeing the various dignified officials in and about the House walking the afore-mentioned plank.

Naturally, my first glance, when at last the members entered the House, was directed at the benches where the Lib—no, I beg its pardon, the National Party, sat in state. (Rather sorry state, I'm afraid, just exactly seven of them had rallied round the new flag.) To look at them, one would hardly have suspected the change of spirit that had visited them overnight. One of them, terrible to relate, wore a crimson bow tie, but otherwise they appeared perfectly normal—or, anyhow, as nearly normal as they have been since the beginning of the session. Mr. Wilford went pink all over when Mr. Parry, in the heat of debate, referred to him as "the Leader of the National Party," but fore and aft of that little incident he remained cool, calm, and collected as ever.

See Hansard 206: 664.

"To think," I whispered to Bold Herminius

Cf. Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Horatius,” lines 245-48.

Herminius’s name had been invoked in a parliamentary context elsewhere: Banjo Paterson’s “The Dauntless Three” (1906) draws on the Macaulay poem to satirise the political manoeuvrings of Sir Albert John Gould (a former senator and “Horatius” in Paterson’s poem), James Thomas Walker (a senator in the first Commonwealth Parliament who was also a relative of Paterson’s) and Edward Davis Millen, another senator in the first Commonwealth Parliament, who is dubbed “Herminius” in Paterson’s poem about the Liberals’ attempt to defend themselves against the Labor Party. Interestingly, the tag “bold Herminius” which Hyde uses appears in the Paterson poem, not the Macaulay one, although she is clearly familiar with the latter. See also the columns for 8 July 1925 and 17 July 1925.

"And that these," she whispered back, indicating the National benches, "are now, so to speak, ill-Liberals."

"Death-bed scene," I murmured. "No flowers, by request. And what d'you think of our National Party?"

"Rather a small nation, isn't it?" she answered dubiously.

"Those," I replied sententiously, "are just the kind that make all the trouble. Look at the Balkans!"

"I couldn't," she shuddered, "but there's one comfort. These—ah—tinpot little nationalities disband at the rate of about three a fortnight."

"Well, well," I concluded, seeing the orderly roll up his sleeves, and flex his biceps prior to throwing us both out, "let's hope for the worst, won't we?"

Before we go any further I want to stop dead in my tracks and highly commend Mr. Lee. (It's quite a pleasure to be able to do so—for once in a while.) During the earlier part of to-day's session, he intimated that he intended to do his utmost, by fair means or, preferably, foul, to induce the powers that be in the Railway Department to give the all too long-suffering travelling public, who are forced, by sheer stern necessity, to make use of the Main Trunk line sleeping accommodation, the same simple comforts which a wily Department is offering visitors to the Dunedin Exhibition.

There is no record of Lee’s statement in Hansard, but it is recorded in “House and Lobby,” New Zealand Times, 22 July 1925, p. 7.

Seriously speaking—that, I believe, is the expression—the House is almost uncannily calm these days, and innocent bystanders are unanimous in wishing for a breeze. However, to speak in colloquial terms, it shouldn't be long before Labour gets the wind up about something or other.

The House and the inhabitants thereof have many and various moods. There are days when knights and gallant squires ride forth to the jousting, and lances—not to mention heads—are broken in the fray: days when everyone sits around, and, mentally puffing the pipe of peace, pays tribute to statesmen dead and gone: frivolous days when Mr. Langstone produces petrified men for the inspection of the startled House: and days like the one in hand when talk is all of war and sickness and distress, and when the Government's eternal struggle with poverty seems as unequal a fight as that of our gallant St. George with his dragon. But, after all, so the story-books tell us. St. George won in the end.

The trouble really began when some too optimistic Minister endeavoured to lay upon the table the returns of the Pensions Department.

See Hansard 206: 656 for Anderson's motion to table the returns.

Mr. Savage's views on this little matter are worth hearing—and admiring. He was speaking on the question of his proposed Motherhood Endowment Bill, under which he earnestly desires to reward the man who has presented his country with six children whom he can't possibly keep with a much larger wage than is awarded to him.

"Have you formed any estimate of the amount involved?" meekly inquired a Minister. Mr. Savage turned on him like a trodden worm.

"I don't care how much is involved," he exclaimed with a dramatic sweep of his arm, "my plea is for humanity."

Isitt asked Savage, "[c]an you give us a rough estimate of the amount involved?" Savage replied "I am not going to go off on any side track. I have a rough estimate of the amount involved, but I am going to continue to explain the Bill in my own way. I do not care how much is involved. My plea is for humanity, not for bricks or mortar" (Hansard 206: 655).

Nice to be Mr. Savage, isn't it?

I think, on the whole, we'd better stop talking about this afternoon. The discussion was, as somebody

Dominion: somebdy.

"It's wonderful," said Sir James, hopefully, "what you can do with a child if you will only trust him. Excellent results are obtained by a policy of humanity."

Parr noted that by "putting these young boys on their honour-trusting them-it is wonderful what can be done….[E]xcellent results are obtained by the policy of humanity and leniency" (Hansard 206: 675-76).

I should hate to deceive you—yes, really I should—and so must, without further shilly-shallying, inform you that to-day was another of those dreadful examination days which swoop down on the stricken House every week or so. Once upon a time, in the days of our extreme youth and innocence, we used to go to Sunday School, and therein were catechised from little pink books, containing all manner of highly personal questions and their true and correct replies—which last we, being sober and industrious infants, knew by heart—er—didn't we? Something of the same nature happens during question time, only in this case the questions, instead of being merely difficult, are, in the main, unanswerable. And, what's more, the people who propound the questions in question know it. They submit a really difficult poser to some most unhappy Minister with an expression that says right out loud, "There's a nut for you to crack, my lad!"

One rather amusing and altogether praiseworthy feature of the day's work is that each member is allowed to explain the reasons for his unreasonable demands for exactly five minutes—thus far and no farther. Mr. Witty, of the Reform benches, was a pathetic case in point. He had ever so many things on his mind: first of all there were the attendants in mental hospitals.

See Hansard 206: 691 and 206: 701.

Then, seeing the Speaker's eye fastened upon him with all the forceful tenacity of a grappling-iron, Mr. Witty, breaking forth into a profuse perspiration, proceeded to his next topic—free school books for children.

See Hansard 206: 688 and 206: 701.

The School Journal was another very dry bone of contention. One member of the Labour-Socialist party solemnly informed us that it wasn't nearly dry enough. He wanted more informative and instructive articles—you know the kind of thing, don't you?—and less Ber-ludd and Thunder.

Lee proposed that "[i]f items of importance were dealt with from time to time in the Journal it could be made not only a first-class reader but a really informative newspaper from the viewpoint of the child…Some of the articles … were very interesting…. But there was a good deal of material of the blood-and-thunder type. With a little less of that and a little more of the material he had indicated…the School Journal would make an altogether admirable reader" (206: 701-02).

It was Mr. Corrigan, of the Wilford Nationalist (fine-sounding word, that) Party, who finally, with pained surprise, pointed out to a shocked and sympathetic House that while members in general were thinking out new questions to spring upon unsuspecting Ministers, the Ministers, being wise in their generation,

Cf. Luke 16 v. 8.

And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.

See also the column for 1 September 1925.

Everything's altogether different by night, isn't it? The old House by day has the solid and worldly-looking dignity of an English country mansion and becomes a place "full of whispers and of shadows."

Cf. Stephen Phillips, "Marpessa," line 138.

Poems (London: John Lane, 1904).

For whereas the small farmer of the backblocks, whose burden already is greater than he can bear, might stand an occasional custard pie, it would, in a manner of speaking, be just a little difficult for him to provide a hot and cold water-service for his shearers; separate sleeping apartments, with flowers in the vases, and hand-embroidered pillow-shams; concrete killing pens, three hundred yards removed from the aristocratic noses of above-mentioned shearers; and just a few similar little trifles, all strictly unnecessary.

Langstone read a report from the shearers' union that specified these details (Hansard 206: 717-18).

Poor Mr. Monteith was perfectly horrified at the idea that just because the installation of a hot water service might ruin a small farmer, the shearers should be allowed, like the farmer's wife and children, to content themselves with cold water for the week or so during which they are employed at the shearing station. The sheep-owners' alternatives, according to the Labour Party, are these: Get hot water or—get into it.

Monteith stated "I do not think that the farmers of New Zealand will cavil at having to provide hot and cold water for their employees. I am certain that they would rather have clean citizens round them than dirty ones. I cannot see any reason why a small minority who will not provide decent and adequate facilities for their employees should not be made to do so" (Hansard 206: 723).

But I've thought out a suitable solution for the sleeping accommodation question, and Mr. Langstone can have it all to himself. If he likes, he can make it part—the better part—of his Bill. Let him propose legislation commanding the sheep-owner, his wife, and such children as he may have been extravagant enough to have, to erect a little tent somewhere in the farm-yard, and leave the bedrooms free for the use of the shearers. I'm sure that the greater majority of small farmers would prefer even this to going to the expense of erecting and furnishing new bedrooms to be used for two weeks in the year by their shearers.

"One sal volatile

Ammonium carbonate, used to treat fainting fits (Oxford English Dictionary).

"Why, what's the matter?" he inquired, surveying me with a commiserating eye.

"The matter is," I told him, "that while not once nor twice in our rough Island story

Our Island Story was a well-known children's history of Britain by Henrietta Marshall and published in 1905.

"Lor, what for?" he queried.

"Reasons of State," I answered. "But the worst of it is that I have an uneasy foreboding that Mr. Lee, hon. member for—for goodness only knows where, or why, is going to make another speech. I dreamed all last night that I was being forcibly ejected from the Ladies' Gallery by the Sergeant-at-Arms, and that, being interpreted, seems to presage just one thing—another speech by Mr. Lee. There's a limit to any woman's endurance, you know."

"Lee? Who's 'e? Never 'eard of 'im," profanely asserted the chemist. "There's Lye, now—"

"Sssh, ssh," I said soothingly. "We don't talk about lies in the House of Representatives. "'Tisn't polite: we call them pardonable exaggerations. They're a political specialty, you know."

"I don't know, and, what's more, I don't want to know," he said stolidly.

"Well, well, perhaps you're right," I agreed. "Best preserve some few of your little illusions. And you couldn't do that if you heard Mr. Lee. However, I must be going."

Just here a timely warning for the benefit of all gentle and ungentle readers: That foreboding was justified. I knew it would be: a maiden aunt on my mother's side knew somebody who had the second sight.

However, let's think of the lighter side of Parliamentary life. Most of you have, from time to time, walked unsuspectingly into the middle of one of those Street Collection Days which, every now and again, descend upon the sober and God-fearing city of Wellington like wolves upon the fold.

Cf. Lord Byron, "The Destruction of Semnacherib," line 1.

The Complete Poetical Works, ed. Jerome J. McGann, vol. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). See also the columns for 9 July 1925, 31 July 1925 and 1 October 1928.

The last shall be first.

Matthew 20 v. 16.

However, there was one little bright spot in Mr. Sullivan's landscape. It appears that while in the wilds of Christchurch he visited a cooking school at which the less frivolous of our deplorably undomestic sex are instructed in the mysteries of apple dumplings and steak an' kidney pudden. Mr. Sullivan came away satisfied that here, at least, the Government was doing its duty, and, for amateurs, doing it rather well.

Sullivan commented that after visiting the cookery school he "felt that very good work was being done indeed" (Hansard 206: 771).

Mr. Wilford's National Party, who are standing on their dignity so hard that they must have pins and needles all over, had their little say in the afternoon's proceedings. By the way, the Nationalists are obviously affected by a touch, not of the sun, but of that springtime feeling. Nearly all of them were tastefully decorated with boutonnieres

A spray of flowers worn in a buttonhole (Oxford English Dictionary).

A member from Taranaki (I regret that I'm unable to give you his name or number) began by requesting the Minister to lend "a little sympathetic ear."

Hyde is referring to Smith, who suggested that Parr "listen sympathetically" to pleas for more resources for Māori education (Hansard 206: 757).

The member from Taranaki (I'm scared to say "the member for Taranaki," in case there should be half a dozen representatives from that province, each of whom would immediately feel insulted at being left out.)

Smith was indeed the member for the Taranaki electorate.

"Children who imagine they are having a jolly good time playing are really being educated to a far greater extent than under the old system."

Smith noted that a visitor to a modern infant school "observes children of five years of age who imagine that they are having a jolly good time playing, whereas they are really being educated to a greater extent and to a more efficient degree under the new methods than they were under the old" (Hansard 206: 757).

Well, it's really no use halting in our gait. Mr. Lee's speech was, on the whole, funny without being vulgar; to tell you the truth, so is his political attitude. He sternly characterised the member for Egmont, who had spoken a few rash words in praise of Sir James Parr's educational endeavours, as "the Apostle of Stodge."

This was Lee's exact phrase; see Hansard 206: 762.

Coming out of the House this afternoon

Dominion: after-.

On Friday, while journeying, all cold and cross and rheumaticky, up the long and circuitous route that conducts one,

Dominion: on.

Now, at first glance this incident may seem to you, as compared with the intensely important matters with which we usually occupy our intelligences, somewhat trivial. But it wasn't. He gave me an idea. What more can you ask?

It's a curious fact that, although I, myself, aided by a corps of trained sleuths, have on frequent occasions painstakingly and thoroughly searched our municipal tramcars, it has never once been my fortune to come upon anything that bore any degree of resemblance to a member of Parliament. After some thought upon the matter, I have come to this conclusion, with which, I think, all right-thinking people will agree. It is, probably owing to the refining and ennobling influence of Mr. Speaker, considered altogether infra dig.

Beneath one's dignity (Oxford English Dictionary).

It seems, at first glance, that their only alternative is to drag their weary bones up and down those steep and slippery paths at least twice a day. But why not let the glorious past step in and solve their difficulties? It would be quite in keeping with the finest traditions of the House (I hope you notice how I'm picking up these neat little Parliamentary phrases), to maintain a flock, covey, or drove of hansom cabs for the personal convenience and comfort of members. Looked at in a practical light, the thing is quite feasible. (Mr. Wilford says that to Mr. Coates at least seventeen times a day.) We could save the expense of mowing all those Parliamentary lawns by turning the requisite and necessary horses out to graze on them after working hours. With a little delicate persuasion, we might induce the drivers to wear red uniforms, or green whiskers, or some other mark of distinction which would separate them from mere common or barn-door cabbies. The idea is both picturesque and economical. However, settle it among yourselves.

As you probably know, or, at the very least, strongly suspect, members of Parliament are not entirely independent individuals. At times, constituents, usually such exceedingly quiet and inoffensive people, can resolve themselves into so many—ever so many—Awkward Facts. I don't mean to say that night after night the cowed and shivering M.P. stumbles through his speech under strict supervision from the eagle eye of some representative from his own home town who takes an active and embarrassing interest in politics—and politicians. Come, come! It isn't quite so bad as all that. But every little while the unbiased observer (meaning you and me) is gently reminded that Mr. Holland, say, is the member for Buller, and that Mr. Sullivan, as a true citizen of Christchurch, mustn't rush all over the place advocating new schools for the exclusive use of Aucklanders. The State occasion when the report of the Tourist Department is tenderly laid upon the table is an example of Parliamentary parochialism having free play.

See Hansard 206: 795-814.

Mr. de la Perrelle, once a Liberal, but now—how are the mighty falling from their seats!—a Wilford-Nationalist, led off the debate with a touching little picture of the beauties of Stewart Island (not the bathing beauties—the scenic ones, I mean), waiting all alone and unobserved for somebody to come along and admire them. He thinks that the Dunedin Exhibition authorities might, if they really put their will into the thing, do worse than run a balloon—or was it a submarine?—to and fro from Dunedin to Stewart Island during the Exhibition.

De la Perrelle suggested that "in connection with the forthcoming Exhibition at Dunedin, I think the Hon. the Minister [of Tourist and Health Resorts] should seriously consider the question of allowing the two Government vessels to be placed at the disposal of the public, so that they may see the beauties of Stewart Island" (Hansard 206: 795). The New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition took place in Dunedin in November 1925.

But while agreeing with Mr. de la Perrelle's constituents that his speech was in every way timely and appropriate, I do think that he should be careful about just one thing. He asserted that Stewart Island was the gem—no, the Pearl of the Pacific.

It suits Hyde's point better to use the phrase "Pearl of the Pacific" but Hansard records de la Perrelle as saying "gem of the Pacific" (Hansard 206: 795).

Talking of Mr. de la Perrelle has brought me, by a more or less roundabout route, to an entirely different subject. I don't think I've told you (and I'm sure you haven't taken the trouble to find out for yourselves), that whenever a member, for reasons of his own, decides that the House may do what it likes, but he is going to adjourn until further notice, it is the custom for him to curtsey to the King—no, I mean bow to the Speaker—before leaving the House. It's rather amusing to watch the different styles of bows adopted by various members. Some duck wildly, so that one can almost see, in one's mind's eye, an imaginary boot being hurled with great force and unerring aim at their heads. And quite right, too! Others, whose names are quite too sacred to mention in these columns, bow stiffly and creakily, as though they found it just a little difficult, not to say impossible, to bend at the middle. No wonder! But Mr. de la Perrelle (possibly you've been wondering where or whether he was going to come in) places his hand affectionately upon his heart, slightly advances one foot, and makes a bow that would do credit to the days of Sir Walter Raleigh. Once upon a time, in the dear old days when we had a Liberal Party all to ourselves, Mr. de la Perrelle was the only Liberal who looked anything like my idea of what a Liberal ought to look like. And now he's merely a Wilford-Nationalist. Sic transit gloria mundi!

"Thus passeth the glory of the world". See also the column for 1 October 1925 and Robin Hyde, Journalese (Auckland: National Printing Company, 1934), p. 12.

Do you know, I almost (but not quite) forgot to tell you something most important. Friday night was the occasion of the presentation of the Budget—you know, the large wad of highly intricate financial documents explaining just why we'll all have to pay more—or less—income tax.

See Hansard 206: 815-31.

Now for this Budget. There was one item in it which should be of interest to everybody—even us. During some previous session (probably before we were born), an extra halfcrown was allotted to such old age pensioners as could prove, with witnesses, affidavits, and alibis, that their second uncles three times removed hadn't died of alcoholic hearts, and that they themselves weren't partial to peppermint drops. Now, all that a pensioner has to do is to walk up to the nearest official, seize him firmly by the buttonhole and say, "Now, look here, my young man, what about that halfcrown?" And he—even he who seemed previously so cold, callous, and unapproachable—will cheerfully and submissively come across with the halfcrown. It is the Law. After all, by slow degrees we're

Dominion: were.

Taking everything and everyone into the spacious limits of our consideration, I suppose it's a little unkind of us to expect our poor old Parliament to get into its working stride directly after a sunshiny week-end. Is it in any way just or reasonable to demand that a member shall fling his whole brain, will and horse-power into a Bill for the prevention and cure of black beetles when little mind pictures of dreamy blue seas, whispering pines, cushioned armchairs and—and all that sort of thing, you know—are floating most provokingly under his very nose? No, it isn't. So you mustn't entertain any hard feeling against the House when I tell you that its behaviour this afternoon was exemplary and, as a natural consequence, most appallingly dull. But be of good cheer, my hearties. There is something in the air. I don't know just what exactly, but to-night I intend to do my best to find out. The debate on the Budget is to be opened, and some say that the Labour-Socialists, armed to the teeth with tear-shells and treacle-tin bombs, are standing by all ready to assassinate it. (N.B.—Rumour hath it that Mr. Fraser, member for Wellington Central, is to supply the tear-shells. He usually does, don't you know.)

However, this afternoon, during question time, a touching little incident occurred which ought to (even if it doesn't) show ignorant people like you and me just how full of wickedness and malice aforethought this world really is. No, Labour didn't, with loud shouts of triumph, unearth yet another capitalistic plot to deprive the poor working-man of his hard-earned—lemonade. What really did happen was this. Somewhere out in the 'wayback country some person or persons unknown, either in crass ignorance of the situation or from sheer spite, have liberated a happy little family of wood-pigeons in one of our deep, dark and gloomy forests.

Hudson asked Bollard, as Minister of Internal Affairs, whether he had read "an announcement in the Press to the effect that wood-pigeons were being imported into this country?" (Hansard 206: 832).

I nearly, but not just quite, forgot something of almost international importance. Mr. Bollard, who, among other duties too numerous to mention, is in charge of what one might call the Haberdashery Department of the House, to-day sponsored a Bill which dealt firmly with fire brigades.

See Hansard 206: 836-39.

However, I'm glad to say that my abysmal ignorance of Mr. Bollard's Bill wasn't shared by the entire House. Mr. Sullivan knew something about the Bill—not much, to be sure, but something. Which, after all, is something, isn't it? It appears that once upon a time, when Christchurch was a picturesque little country town whither still-life artists came from miles around for the sole purpose of painting the Government Departments, the Government, being in one of those spacious, plutocratic, largesse-scattering moods, subsidised the Fire Boards to the extent of £200. For this munificent sum the firemen of the city were required to keep one eye and both ears open for the first indications of arson, spontaneous combustion, or mere shocking carelessness (on the part of the office boy), which might chance to take place in any Government property. Well, that was quite all right in the days when gallant fire-fighters used to work their pumps by tying them to the tails of the equine members of the brigades, and when the usual method of escape from a burning building was effected by unravelling one's stockings, tying the threads together, and thus fashioning them into a rope-ladder. These methods were, in their day, simple, economical, and—well, more or less effective. Mostly less. But nowadays, strange to relate, the altogether degenerate citizens of Christchurch, headed by Mr. Sullivan, have the bare-faced impudence to demand beautiful new fire engines, painted red, fitted out with ear-splitting sirens, and surmounted with firemen all dressed up in shiny brass helmets.

See Sullivan's speech (Hansard 206: 837-38). The details correspond with Hyde's rendition here.

This article is suffering from a dislocated spine—so you really must excuse it if it sounds a little weak and wobbly. I deserted it in mid-air, caught up my hat, an ancient and dilapidated note-book, and the stump of a pencil which somebody had inadvertently forgotten to conceal, and returned to the House to see what was happening to the poor, lonesome, unprotected Budget. As soon as I entered the Ladies' Gallery, I became aware that something had happened. It was—I'll give you three guesses, and you might just as well start by giving it up—yet another motion of absolutely no-confidence in the Government. Everybody's doing it, aren't they. This time the mover was Mr. Sidey, one of the stalwarts of the Wilford Nationalist benches.

Sidey's speech can be found in Hansard 206: 851-58; the motion of no-confidence appears at 206: 858.

Always expect the unexpected. Nearly everyone in the House, except, of course, the wiseacres who always know just exactly what's going to happen after it's taken place, hoped and believed that the Labour-Socialists would excel themselves to-night. Well, perhaps they did in one sense. They lay low and said nuffin'—absolutely nuffin'.

Cf. Joel Chandler Harris, "The Wonderful Tar-Baby," from Brer Rabbit.

Brer Rabbit, ed. Marcus Crouch (London: Penguin, 1977), p. 13. See also the columns for 2 July 1925 and 2 September 1925, and Robin Hyde, Journalese (Auckland: National Printing Company, 1934), p. 37.

As I was—I admit it with a certain amount of shame—leaving the House, somebody informed me, in a stealthy whisper, that perhaps, if we were very good, kept quiet and waited until, say, two o'clock in the morning, we might possibly see a division. But I didn't wait. What is the old saying?—"A House divided against itself shall surely fall."

The original reference is to Matthew 12 v. 25.

And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.

But the phrase had become popularised through Abraham Lincoln's speech of June 16, 1858:

We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved-I do not expect the house to fall-but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

[Speech in Springfield, Illinois, June 16 1858], electronic resource (Champaign, IL: Project Gutenberg, 199-.)

From the very beginning of this beautiful civilisation of ours, since the days when long-haired, lop-eared,

Dominion: lop-earned.

Someone had been mowing the lawns in the Parliamentary grounds at an early hour on the morning of the day before yesterday. I don't know who did it. Perhaps, when he's quite sure that nobody but the early worms are present to be scandalised at his informality, Mr. Speaker himself takes a turn with the lawn-mower—just as a change from the eternal pomp and ceremony of Parliamentary life. Or perhaps, on the other hand, he doesn't. That wig and gown may be sewn on. Anyhow, I entered the House feeling that nothing mattered very much. Springtime was definitely back again.

Just as a perfectly clear and indisputable proof of the mental, moral, and physical condition of the House on the afternoon in question, I may tell you that never once, during the course of the proceedings, did Mr. Speaker feel called upon to remark in pained, not to say scandalised tones, "Order! Order! Order! If there is any more of this I will name the member."

Let us digress for one moment. Did you know that in Parliament being "named" by Mr. Speaker is quite as awful a punishment as being solemnly stood in the corner by your school-marm? A member who has been "named" by the Speaker is never quite the same afterwards. He roams forlornly about the corridors, endeavouring to persuade total strangers to call him Smith. This is all very sad. But a member can, if he feels that he really must, descend to even greater depths of infamy. He can be marched out of the House under escort, with the Sergeant-at-Arms keeping step behind him.

I suppose that most of you have frequently wondered, in language more or less picturesque, just what and just why taxation really is. A totally Independent member, who happens, more by luck than good management, to sit on the Reform benches, cleared up that little matter during the afternoon. It appears that after all taxation is for our own good, and that it hurts the Government ever so much more than it hurts us. (Remember how your father, slipper in hand, used to say that when you were a boy?) "Taxes," according to the hon[.] member, "are the compulsory savings of the people."

F. J. Rolleston argued that "a man who has to pay high taxation probably pays it out of money which he would otherwise have expended…. The way [taxation] is finalized is that it is a means of compulsory saving via the Treasury" (Hansard 206: 885).

Let me speak in private, for just one moment, to the feminine section of the community. You know how, every six months or so, your husband descends upon your nice tidy kitchen exactly like a wolf on the fold, and demands, in loud and ungentlemanly tones, to see your accounts?

Cf. Lord Byron, "The Destruction of Semnacherib," line 1.

The Complete Poetical Works, ed. Jerome J. McGann, vol. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). See also the columns for 9 July 1925, 24 July 1925 and 1 October 1928.

Later on in the same day—or, to be perfectly exact, in the evening—I happened to be strolling down the outer corridor

Dominion: orridor.

I tiptoed to the door of the Gallery and stood there hesitating—but not hesitating very hard. My better self told me that I ought to go in and listen—yes, positively listen—to Mr. Langstone's speech.

"Would you?" I enquired of an orderly.

"I would not," he replied, with that crisp decision that won the Battle of Waterloo.

So I didn't: and that, ladies and gentlemen, was that.

However, just as a sop to Cerberus

In Greek and Latin mythology the proper name of the watch-dog which guarded the entrance of the infernal regions, represented as having three heads. Used allusively, esp. in phrase, to give a sop to Cerberus (so as to stop his mouths for the moment: cf. Æneid VI. 417) (Oxford English Dictionary). See also the column for 9 September 1925.

"Hang out our banners on the castle wall! The cry is still 'They come!' "

William Shakespeare, Macbeth, act V, scene v, lines 1-2.

The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005).

The member for Egmont started the afternoon's proceedings by protesting that the entire time of the House is occupied in convincing Labour-Socialists and Wilford-Nationalists that the Government simply thrives on no-confidence motions, which, amusing though they may be, are just a little hampering to the country's business.

Hawken registered his "protest against the constant introduction of these want-of-confidence motions into the debates of this House" (Hansard 207: 4).

Then something happened which proved that one never can tell in Parliament, or, if one can, one mustn't. Mr. Wilford, who is, like his party, looking a mere shadow of his former robust self, arose and announced to the House that he was tired of committee-rooms, masks, pass-words, and counter-signs, and was quite prepared to allow the Prime Minister to take over the Nationalist Party lock, stock, and empty barrel.

After much goading Wilford announced: "I am going to show what my attitude and the attitude of my party in the matter is now by abandoning secrect diplomacy and making a straightout offer across the floor of the House, which the Prime Minister might accept or reject, as he thinks fit. Here is my offer: (1) My resignation as leader of the National party; (2) the making of a new party at once in order to secure sound and stable government, with myself excluded from any portfolio; (3) the forming of a National party for national development and social betterment; (4) the matter of Cabinet portfolios to be left entirely to the Prime Minister; (5) the problems relating to candidates to be settled by mutual agreement" (Hansard 207: 9-10). See also Robin Hyde, Journalese (Auckland: National Printing Company, 1934), p. 37.

And so on and so forth. I've forgotten the rest, except that the lady was finally convinced. Which is, in all probability, just what will happen to the Government.

There are moments, I believe, in the placid existences of most sober, righteous and respectable citizens when they seriously consider the pros and cons—particularly the pros—of a really up-to-date version of the Gunpowder Plot. At Home in England, so I am credibly informed, the Government, with most unusual foresight, anticipates any development of this nature by sending an orderly, armed with pocket torch and six shooter, to pry into all the dark, dank, and dismal corners of the cellars just before the session begins. One never knows, you know, does one? I don't know whether the same custom is observed in connection with our own Parliament, but if it isn't, it ought to be. Three solid and stolid hours up in the ladies' gallery are enough, and more than enough, to make a dangerous conspirator out of anybody. It's all very well for members. They can sleep, perchance to dream

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act III, scene i, lines 66-67.

The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005).

We have registered our complaint. But, unlike our Labour-Socialists, we do not intend to spend the rest of the day dwelling on what is—to us, at any rate—an exceedingly painful subject. Our duty must be did [sic]. Let us

Dominion: as.

One frequently hears—in fact, I may say that the fact is constantly being drummed into one—that a child has no friend like a mother. A county, on the other hand, has no friend like its member. Now you and I, in our abysmal ignorance, are apt to look upon Southland as a place where one may, or, if one is altogether unfairly favoured of fortune, may not run into a blizzard, a seven-foot snowdrift, or, perchance, a prowling Polar bear. It is our settled conviction that the exports of Southland consist almost entirely of oysters and influenza. Then, one day, through some unforeseen accident, or perhaps per medium of Providence working in a mysterious way its wonders to perform, we wander into the Ladies' Gallery and hear Mr. de la Perrelle on the subject of Southland. If anybody but myself told it to you, I don't suppose you'd believe it, but Mr. de la Perrelle actually stood there, in the very middle of members from Torrid Taranaki, Cloudless Canterbury, and Blossoming Buller, and asserted that during the past winter months Southland had calmly taken unto itself more sunshine than was absorbed by any of the other counties.

De la Perrelle said that "[Southland] has this year enjoyed more sunshine during the winter months than has any other province in New Zealand. We have heard of the winterless North: I claim we have the winterless South in Southland" (Hansard 207: 108).

Incredulous voice from the Reform benches: W—what's that?

No interjection is recorded in Hansard.

Mr. de la Perrelle concluded his speech with an appeal for "teamwork"—otherwise Fusion—and a touching little quotation from Kipling:

Saying which, he relapsed into his seat, while the soi-disants "bloomin' souls," signified their approval by the very mild form of clapping which, in Parliament, represents three hearty British cheers.

Talking of patriotism, Kipling, and all that sort of thing, you know, has brought me back to an incident which I quite forgot to tell you, and which happened a few days ago. So, if nobody minds, I shall follow Parliamentary procedure by taking up your time in talking about something which is hopelessly out of date. That something is Mr. Edie—yet another Wilford-Nationalist, who on a comparatively recent afternoon, disclosed himself as a patriot of the very deepest dye—not red dye this time.

The debate Hyde is referring to occurred on 31 July 1925.

During the course of the afternoon, Mr. Parry made a little speech which gave me—even me—some manner of insight into the Labour-Socialist view of the Budget. Do you remember how once upon a time, in the days when children were not born into the world in such an advanced state of sophistication that they absolutely refused to believe in Santa Claus, we used to hang our stockings up at the foot of our beds, and sleep with one eye and both ears open right through the night before Christmas—just waiting until the chill light of morning should reveal to us the fact that our maiden aunt had sent us a dictionary in lieu of that scooter which, for months past, had been nearest and dearest to our heart? Well, the night before the reading of the Budget is the Parliamentary Christmas Eve—though, in accordance with the rest of the new generation, the Labour-Socialist Party are getting just a little bit sceptical about Santa Claus. But they aren't too sceptical to fill the air with their lamentations when their big brother's stocking presents, to their eyes at least, a somewhat more mysteriously bulgy appearance than their own. There's no pleasing some people, is there, now?

By the way, I believe that at the extreme beginning of this paragraph we started out by mentioning Mr. Parry. Well, Mr. Parry, with tears in his eyes, asserted that all he had found in his stocking was a hole.

See Parry's speech (Hansard 207: 109-15).

Every child knows, and most men and women think they know, all about the place where members imbibe

Dominion: timbibe.

Everybody please keep quite still for one moment while we take the Parliamentary meteorological reading for to-day. Let's see now[.]

Barometer: falling tendency; Labour-Socialist depression. Quite a number of neat little Labour-Socialist schemes fell clean through yesterday afternoon[.]

Wind—no, I think we'll call it a simoon,

A hot, dry, suffocating sand-wind which sweeps across the African and Asiatic deserts at intervals during spring and summer (Oxford English Dictionary).

Loud squalls—particularly from Labour benches. General weather conditions—most unsettled. In fact, the climatic conditions of Parliament are all anyhow. What do you think? Mr. Isitt, Independent Nationalist, has actually perpetrated a brutal and punishing attack upon the Labour Party.

See Isitt's speech (Hansard 207: 155-63).

To be perfectly just to everybody concerned, we should retrace our steps and explain that Mr. Isitt was assisted in his attack, if not actually incited to it, by the member for Rotorua, Mr. Hockly, of the Reform benches.

See Hockly's speech (Hansard 207: 146-55).

But we are showing a distinct and altogether Parliamentary tendency to ramble. Let us stick to our muttons,

Cf. François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel.

The phrase is a translation of the proverbial French phrase "Revenons à nos moutons," meaning to return to the subject at hand.

Gargantua and Pantagruel, trans. Sir Thomas Urquhart and Pierre Le Motteux (London: David Campbell Publishers, 1994), p. 26. See also the columns for 20 August 1925 and 3 September 1925.

You know, I'd often heard about this ideal land policy, and, like many other unsophisticated people, admired it from afar. Those two last words should be underlined. When one really comes close up to the policy (which isn't often, if Socialist-Labour has anything to say about it), one doesn't find just quite exactly so much to admire. For instance: Let's take a telling little point that Mr. Hockly made in connection with a sweeping statement by the Leader of the Labour-Socialists. (The point told on him—visibly.) Here is the statement in all its pristine glory, absolutely unmarred by the sordid touch of logic, reality, or practical common sense. "If the farmer gets the full fruits of his labour and devotion, then there is nothing left for the mortgagee."

Hockly cited the remark from Hansard as follows: "'If the farmer gets the full fruits of his labour and exertions there is nothing left for the mortgagee'" (Hansard 207: 148).

Now you and I, as Mr. Hockly gently pointed out, may be the proud but not unbending possessors of a few hundred hard-earned pounds. (I didn't say that we are—only that we might be, one day.) We could, if we really felt like it, invest our money in enterprises for raising cucumbers in Chile, or selling gold bricks to natives of Guiana. But people, not altogether excluding the Socialist-Labour Party, urge upon us the necessity, wisdom, and patriotism of investing our money in our own country. They depict to us, in glowing language (sometimes these tales really are a bit too hot, aren't they?) the great undeveloped portions of our country, ready and waiting to be opened up. They tell us, with sobs in their voices, of congestion in cities, and of housing problems that can't and won't let themselves be solved. They point out to us the numbers of people who could, if financially assisted, make the wilderness blossom as the rose: they demonstrate to us the utter inability of the State Advances Department to cope with the demand for loans. And we—there being one of us born every minute—invest our money, at, if we are at heart decent people, a reasonable rate of interest. So far, according to the Labour-Socialists, so good. They have no objection to the "capitalists" helping their lame dogs over stiles, but immediately the aforementioned stile has been crossed they encourage, by every means in their power, the lame dogs to bite the hands that fed them. It looks like a first-class way of diverting money available into other channels than in helping the needy farmer and the needy worker who wants to borrow to build a home.

There is any amount of similar—would it be rude, to call it moonshine?—served out on pretty little china plates and handed round the House for the edification of members. One of these days (says Mr. Holland, says he), everything will be free to the entire community—excepting, of course, the right to criticise the then Labour-Socialist Government. It all sounds very nice, doesn't it?

"Then this Government," I asked an authority, "keeps its visitors under guard for the simple reason that its cellars are chock full of bars of gold and barrels of—no, not what you're thinking—diamonds?"

"Not that I know of," he said, with a regretful little sigh. "Bank-notes, then?" I suggested. "You know, the Labour-Socialists must have some way of finding the money wherewith to make everything free for everyone."

"The revenue of the Government," he said, pompously, "is, in the main, derived from rates, taxes and Customs duties."

"Rates and taxes," I exclaimed, "but I always thought that the people had to pay those."

"Quite so," he replied.

"Then the more revenue the Government needs, the higher will be the taxes imposed on the people?"

"My child," he replied. "Your edication [sic] is, by slow degrees, improving. The Labour-Socialist professions are just a little too good to be true."

But good gracious me, what's been happening to Mr. Isitt all this time? Though, really, one doesn't need to bother one's head about the member for Christchurch North. He can very well take care of himself—and, if necessity arises, of the entire Labour-Socialist Party too. During his speech, Parliament appeared, for the time, a trifle more like an Imperial institution, and a trifle less like a glorified borough council. According to Mr. Isitt, New Zealand is "not self-supporting, not self-centred, and not self-controlled." We are members of the greatest body in the world—the British Empire—and the slow poison of unemployment and industrial strife, can spread from one member of that body to another, till the whole is brought down.

Isitt said "[t]his New Zealand of ours is not self-supporting; it is not self-centred; it is not self-controlled. To an enormous extent it depends on the Mother-land as its chief market and as its banker. I think sane men will recognize that if economic disaster overtakes England, sooner or later we here in New Zealand are bound to suffer" (Hansard 207: 155).

Yet another telling little point extracted from Mr. Isitt's speech[.] Labour holds that the purely material things of life—"a comfortable home, light work, short hours"—will produce a happy, contented, virtuous race. The idle, dissipated, slave-oppressing, dyspepsia-oppressed rich have all of these benefits, and more. But somehow it doesn't seem to do them much good—at least, not if we're to believe what Mr. Holland says about them. Funny, isn't it? It seems to me that the truth of the matter is that whereas one cannot exaggerate the importance of environment, something more is needed to complete the spiritual

Dominion: spritual.

Talking of Mr. Jordan. Mr. Jordan really did do his best to step into the yawning breach which Mr. Isitt had revealed between Labour-Socialist promises and their performance. But the breach opened just a little wider and swallowed Mr. Jordan up—quotations and all. A sad fate for such a painstaking member.

Yesterday afternoon, just before going into the House, I happened, on glancing upward, to become aware of the tail-end of a rainbow, flung, like a gaily-coloured scarf, right across the buildings. I'm a little hazy on the matter—perhaps Mr. Jordan, Parliament's Biblical authority, can set me right—but I believe that once upon a time, when the bad old world was washed comparatively clean by the Deluge, the rainbow, along with the dove and the olive branch, was formally adopted as the official sign of peace upon earth and good-will to all men.

Cf. Luke 2 v. 14.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

The foregoing statement is merely a refined and roundabout way of telling you I have absolutely nothing to serve up to you but the very smallest of small beer. That reminds me. Talking of beer, the night before last, the Minister of Education issued a revised and corrected form of a previous statement of his concerning the enormous amount spent annually on beer (and kindred spirits) in this fair land of ours. He went so far as to intimate that seeing that the honest New Zealand working man would not, as a reasonable being, waste such a large sum on what is, comparatively speaking, a luxury, while his wife and children went in want of the actual necessaries of life, this must be a prosperous, and, in our own words, "a pretty joyous country."

The speech to which Hyde refers actually occurred on 28 July. Parr noted "I have said that this country is prosperous. Can there be any doubt about its spending-power? Surely, when one looks around, one finds ample proof. Honourable members have only to contemplate the nightly concourse at picture theatres throughout the Dominion; they have only to contemplate the huge attendances at the race meetings and the totalizator investments, which last year amounted to £7,500,00. All these things point to the spending-power of the country. I hope, Sir, that the House will not misunderstand me. I am not casting any reflection upon any one. I am not preaching a sermon, but am merely looking upon the matter as a dispassionate observer, as a student of the social conditions of the people, and I am calling attention to the fact that New Zealand is not a sad country, but a joyful one, rejoicing in its own prosperity, and that to-day New-Zealanders are getting a great deal of pleasure out of life" (Hansard 206: 863).

Perhaps the reason why Parliament so rarely gets anywhere is that it has to look in every direction all at once—which is enough to give any member a mental cast in his eye, isn't it? I daresay, for example, that if the House really took off its coat, rolled up its shirt sleeves, took a long, deep breath, and sat down to (or stood up to) business, it might, in a single session, tidy up the internal (some people say the infernal) affairs of Wellington. It might, but it mustn't. There's the rest of the country to be favourably considered. Take Napier.

You and I have, for the greater part of our unnatural lives, gone to bed o' nights with the cosy sort of feeling that in all probability citizens in all the other centres of New Zealand, including Napier, were probably doing just exactly the same. The greater majority of us have never actually visited Napier to find out for ourselves whether this was just so—we've just taken it for granted that Napier, in its own particular way, was worrying along more of less successfully. But it isn't. Napier is being gradually washed away.

See McIlvride's speech (Hansard 207: 184-85).

In fact, according to its member, Napier has come to this. There are now absolutely no prosecutions for watered milk in Napier. All that the poor but dishonest milkman really needs to do is to add a pinch of salt to his watered milk and swear that the sea-waves, washing over his cart, must by some unforeseen accident have entered his milk-cans. And when a man comes home at night and informs his wife that he has seen a sea-serpent strolling calmly down the main highway, she never quite knows whether he's telling the truth, or whether it's just—well, you follow me?

Hyde invents these details, which do not appear in McIlvride's speech.

While we are on this cosmopolitan conversation, we might as well make passing mention of a matter brought up by Mr. Sullivan this afternoon. Christchurch is coming on—though one finds it a little hard to ascertain in what direction. Anyhow, Mr. Sullivan arose and gave notice of his intention to ask one more unfortunate—I forget which Minister he mentioned—to allow not only Christchurch but all big cities to have roads not limited to a mere sixty-six feet in width, but fully one hundred feet across.

See Hansard 207: 200.

In the evening, I rejoice to say, business was just a little brisker than it had been during the afternoon. Mr. Holland spoke.

See Hansard 207: 227-37.

There was one point in Mr. Harris's speech which rather appealed to me. The member for Buller had plainly and uncompromisingly stated that "the Budget contains nothing at all for the poor man. It is all electioneering and political window-dressing."

In fact it was probably Lee who made the remark. Lee commented that "the Government definitely in the Budget acknowledges its intention of granting further remissions to those individuals who are already receiving too much at the expense of the poorer sections of the community" (Hansard 207: 95). There is no record of Holland speaking on the Budget before Harris, and it seems likely from Harris's remarks that he was addressing Lee's speech.

Everybody—including Mr. Isitt—knew that no man could attack the Labour-Socialist Party and all its works (not to mention its won't-works) and depart unmolested. But—although the House probably knew just what to expect—I don't think that the uninitiated spectators in the Ladies' Gallery had previously believed that any member could or would refer to the way an opponent wore his hair (at least, Mr. Isitt has some to wear), his "sing-song, drawling voice," and his bill at Bellamy's.

Holland referred to a comment of Isitt's that a particular monopoly was "enough to make a man's hair stand on end," joking that "[t]he honourable gentleman's hair has been standing on end ever since" (Hansard 207: 235). He also made fun of Isitt's "sing-song, droning voice" (Hansard 207: 234) and said that if Isitt was "remunerated according to the service he renders he would not be able to meet his bill at Bellamy's bar" (Hansard 207: 233).

"We must not think of themes like these"

Lord Byron, "Don Juan," canto 3, line 750.

The Complete Poetical Works, ed. Jerome J. McGann, vol. 5 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).

"I move that the House do now resolve itself into a Committee of Supply." Businesslike sort of ring about that, isn't there? Mr. Speaker, whom, deep down in my own private mind, I have christened "The Tempestuous Petticoat," carefully adjusts his iron-grey wig, and, like the Mace, goes into hiding—but, unlike the Mace, not underneath the table.

See also Robin Hyde, Journalese (Auckland: National Printing Company, 1934), p. 40.

But before we start talking about the Opposition—they're always there when anyone wants—or doesn't want—them, let's try, in our hopelessly unsophisticated and unparliamentary way, to get some kind of shadowy idea as to the nature of the day's proceedings. The true Financial Debate, as you're aware if you've been conscientiously reading the newspapers, came to an idea on the night before last. About time, too. It was pretty far gone in senile decay. The afternoon that I'm at present painstakingly endeavouring to discuss is rightly supposed to be spent in consideration and, if we're really uncannily lucky, in the passing of the first item of the proposed expenditure. That is to say, the first item of the Estimates. Sounds all right if you say it quickly, doesn't it?

But the truth of the matter, as far as an onlooker can perceive it, seems to be that on this occasion—and for the matter of that, on most others—anyone can get up and chat peacefully away about any mortal matter that he chooses to mention, so long as it has some distant connection with what he thinks the finances of the country ought or oughtn't

Dominion: ought'nt.

But for reasons of our own we have decided, temporarily at least, to give the Labour-Socialists a rest. They need it. Rest is simply splendid for the nerves (you know, the things that old-fashioned people call bad temper), the mind, the digestion, the political indigestion, and so forth. A hundred years' sleep, now, would work wonders.

So let's cast our eye around into every Parliamentary nook and cranny, until finally, in the chaste seclusion of the Nationalist benches, we discover Mr. Sidey. Mr. Sidey is, at the moment, the strong hand, stout heart, and in control of the Wilford-Nationalists. Mr. Wilford is absent through indisposition I believe.

Sidey began the debate on supply; see Hansard 207: 266-67.

But to come back to Mr. Sidey—who has been left outside all this time, shivering with cold and excitement. As you all know (or ought to, if you're really good and patriotic citizens), the Budget, each session, is prepared and read by the Minister of Finance. But Mr. Nosworthy, who, through the illness of Mr. Downie Stewart, has taken on his shoulders the very heavy weight of the Finance portfolio, is a new and, as he himself put it, "green" Minister of Finance, and the Budget which is at present undergoing much "unjust, ungenerous, unkind, untrue" criticism, is his first and—I'm sure he hopes—his last effort of the kind. This is altogether too good for Mr. Sidey to miss. Carefully, with an infinitude of toil and trouble,

Cf. William Shakespeare, Macbeth, act IV, scene i, lines 10-11.

The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005).

This brings us to another little matter. After members in general have turned the financial pockets of the Budget inside out, and, incidentally, found that no odd threepenny bits have somehow slipped through the lining, they are still at liberty to agree to disagree with the first item of the expenditure. This total disapproval is expressed by a motion, moved, in this case, by the unquenchable Mr. Sidey, to reduce the proposed expenditure by five pounds.

The motion to reduce the supply (by £4) was actually proposed by Monteith (Hansard 207: 292).

However, the long, sad story had a happy ending. The Government kept its five pounds and its dignity. Mr. Sidey was reassured concerning the little matter of his tuppence ha'penny. I say nothing whatever about his dignity. The Minister of Finance came through his ordeal without loss of life or limb.

Some few Governments have a future; every one of them has a past—lurid, murky, or blameless, just according to which side is talking about it. The present Government's past is—strictly according to Socialist-Labour—only one shade lighter than its present. Once, then, in the very long ago, the Government, out of the kindness of its heart, decided that the Pensions Department in Auckland was inconveniently situated for the old and infirm, and therefore purchased other buildings, in the heart of Queen Street, to take their place. This was all very well. But for some reason or reasons utterly unknown to Socialist-Labour, the Government changed its mind yet again, and made use of other buildings—buildings which, according to our Socialist friends, are an awful example of departmental frightfulness. Mr. Jordan, almost with tears in his eyes, and quite with sobs in his voice, pointed out that his idea was that old-age pensioners should be kept right away from the atmosphere of the courts.

Jordan said that "[t]he place the [Pensions] Department had now was away up at the top of a hill, in a side street, and it was a great hardship to the pensioners having to go there, as there were no public conveyances going near the place" (Hansard 207: 269). Hansard does not record any reference to the Pensions Department being located near the courts.

Do you remember the story of the dear old lady with ninety-nine previous convictions, and one over for luck, who became so accustomed to her frequent little outings in Black Maria that she used to enter that vehicle with a patronising "Home, John!" to the chauffeur? I suppose that on her very first excursion trip the grim grey building at the end of her road seemed to her an uninviting and altogether unfriendly place; but by the time she'd been in and out, off and on, for twenty years or so, it became merely, as she herself put it, "Home, John." A precisely similar experience befalls the individual who, for reasons known only to herself, makes a practice of frequenting the Ladies' Gallery in Parliament. For the past two days, while members have been roaming about in dress suits trying to find their gold studs, and practising telling little speeches of welcome in front of a looking-glass, I've been feeling curiously lost and lonesome.

The House was adjourned so that MPs could socialise with the American Naval Fleet.

But the House isn't quite the House it was when last we saw it. The Wilford-Nationalist body has lost its Wilford. For some time past he has been feeling the strain of political life, and is now so unwell that he will not be back in the House again this session.

See the announcement on Wilford's illness in Hansard 207: 317-18

Mr. Nash, of the Reform benches, started the business of the afternoon by putting some terse and forceful little inquiries about shunting accidents at his beloved Palmerston North, to the Minister of Railways.

See Hansard 207: 315-16.

Isn't it amazing how a woman can talk for an indefinite length of time about any given subject under the sun, except business? Well, well, we promise to be severely practical for the rest of the day. We will discuss Bills—not the kind which your monthly mail brings in, and which your irate husband is always bringing up, but the sort that members in general, and Labour-Socialist members in particular, are perpetually trying to bring off. Mr. Sullivan, after asking leave to introduce his Bill into what is, to Bills at least, decidedly impolite society, said a few words in explanation of and apology for aforementioned Bill's existence.

See Hansard 207: 318-19.

Mr. Sullivan's speech began after this fashion: "I would like to say a few words at the baptism of my little Bill."

Cf. Sullivan: " I think, Sir, I will take this early opportunity of saying a few words by way of baptism of my little Bill in case some unfortunate fate befalls it at the hands of an unsympathetic Government before it reaches second reading" (Hansard 207: 318).

But here, after our usual unbusinesslike fashion, we've been talking for fully ten minutes, without telling you the name and nature of the little Bill. Mr. Sullivan did solemnly christen the infant "Municipal Corporations Amendment Bill" and it was brought into the world solely for this reason: At the present time, if you are, by any chance, over twenty-one, apparently sane and not a convicted criminal, you can, if you are so disposed, lift your voice in the governing of your country to the extent of voting at either Parliamentary or municipal elections. This is all very well in its way. But as matters stand at the present time, you must clearly and definitely prove, with the assistance of not more than half a dozen specially hired witnesses, that you are an honest and industrious subject of the King's, God bless him, before your name is allowed to appear on any one roll. Then, if you are foolishly extravagant enough to desire to figure, in small and insignificant letters, on yet another civic roll, you must go through the whole performance all over again. And however exciting this may seem when you are just turned twenty-one, it is apt to pall upon you by the time you reach the indolent age of forty. Mr. Sullivan's Municipal Corporations Amendment Bill provides for just one large-sized roll, authorising everybody to vote on everything. That is the long and short of it—and I suppose, if all the Labour Party are going to discuss the matter it will be more long than short.

By the way, have you or have you not seen Parliament House in its Fleet Week decorations? The marble building, with its tall columns and wavering shadows, always reminded me of an Arabian Nights' palace, but in its present glorified condition it—well, it would simply make poor old Aladdin turn pale pea-green, curl up his toes and die for sheer envy. And wouldn't the Forty Thieves (don't tell me that you've forgotten the Forty Thieves), enjoy the little business of filling their pockets with diamonds, rubies, and sapphires all as big as ducks' eggs? It's sacrilege to say that they are mere electric lights. Every time I go up in the lift I half expect the guardian Djinn thereof to rub one of the colossal brass buttons which adorn him from the boots up, thereby inducing the entire building to disappear in a puff of highly sulphurous smoke. I suppose that the opinion of the mere layman (that means you) would be, if anyone cared to consult him on the matter, "No such luck."

Later on in the same touching little poem, I recollect, that identical Walrus is discovered wiping the tears from both his eyes. That's just exactly what I feel that I'd really like to do at the present moment. But let us at all costs preserve a Spartan stoicism. Some day I'm going to bring together a score or

Dominion: of.

That brings me to another point. I've told you, I believe, about the simple yet stately chair adorned by Mr. Speaker[.] Well, as a general rule, Mr. Speaker confines his love of luxury to a single black cushion—you know the effect—sombre, stern, and judicial. Yesterday afternoon, however, a beautiful blue velvet cushion, just exactly the right shade to tone with Mr. Speaker's iron-grey wig, appeared on the chair. This is all very well in its way. I, for one, believe that the Speaker, who has to preserve some semblance of wakefulness through the very drowsiest parts of the debate, should be treated with every possible consideration and kindliness. He needs it more than we do. But, all joking apart, several of the more frequent visitors to the Ladies' Gallery are prepared to produce X-ray plates and medical certificates showing that their spines have become permanently deformed since the first fateful day when they entered the House. I wonder if the S.P.C.A. could be induced to give the matter a little serious consideration? Do you know that, actually, in the Ladies' Press Gallery, we sit on benches! Over in the Press Gallery occupied by the Lords of Creation, they appear to recline on divans.

There are members in the House who remind one, in a dim and distant sort of way, of Master Squeers, the boy-hero of "Nicholas Nickleby." Master Squeers, if you will take the trouble to remember him, had curiously elastic features—so elastic that the caps, hats, boots, and waistcoats sent by fond mammas to other little boys at his school all seemed just exactly to fit Master Squeers.

See for example Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, facs. copy (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1982), p. 68.

But let's be perfectly just to Mr. Buddo. It was another member—I won't be positive, but it seems reasonable to suppose that the hon. gentleman was a Labour-Socialist—who started all the trouble about telephones.

Fraser began the debate by asking about developments in the postal and telegraphic services (Hansard 207: 372).

As you really ought to know, telephones are included among the burdens that the Post and Telegraph Department is, for its sins, compelled to bear. The poor old Post and Telegraph Department, not to mention the officials thereof, came in for a somewhat rough hearing during the evening session. Mr. Langstone was among those standing by ready to cast the first stone. He painted a graphic picture of a little country town under his paternal care—refusing all Ministerial requests to spell its name—wherein, despite the solicitations of the inhabitants, the Government had positively refused to erect a sizeable post office.

Langstone mentioned "a little place near Raetihi called Ruatiti, and one could not kennel a dog in the little box which served as a post-office and telephone bureau up there" (Hansard 207: 379).

"I move," said Mr. Coates, with characteristic bright and breezy optimism, "that these papers do now lie upon the table and be printed." And he glanced hopefully at the brooding and sphinx-like countenance of Mr. Speaker.

"Oh, no you don't, my dear young man," cooed Mr. Forbes, leader of our—what d'you call it?—our Opposition. "No, you don't!"

At least, to be perfectly truthful, Mr. Forbes didn't express himself in those words; but that, as far as I could gather, was just exactly what he meant.

Forbes wanted more debate on the areas of contention in the statement Coates had read; see Hansard 207: 404.

I suppose that to give perfect peace of mind to those sober and system-loving individuals who will occur in the worst regulated of communities, we'd better go right back, and begin, in the same old way, at the very beginning. Permit me to explain. The paper which Mr. Coates so fervently desired to lay upon the table was an official answer to certain allegations of various natures (including ill-nature) made in the report of the Auditor-General against sundry officials of the Civil Service. Mr. Coates, the Civil Service being the pride of his fatherly heart, really couldn't suffer such rude and unkind remarks to pass unchallenged. So, putting on a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and a "Heaven-help-the-man-who-interrupts-me-now" expression, he went clean through the Auditor-General's report and discovered every one of the allegations made therein to be so much—what do our Americans call it?—so much skybosh. Having said so, in perfectly polite and Parliamentary language, he appeared quite willing to let the matter drop. There is just one thing in Parliament which you can count upon with absolute certainty. When one member is willing, not to say anxious, to let something drop, all the others immediately wake up to find that they aren't. You see, they have a kind of feeling that the reason why their dear and honourable friend is so very willing to let the whole thing drop may possibly be because it's burning his fingers. You ask Mr. Corrigan.

So Mr. Forbes—that mighty leader of forlorn hopes—arose and declared that while he, to be sure, knew absolutely nothing whatever about the matter, he felt that it was his duty to his constituents to collect some of the more lurid details, and he was quite sure that the Prime Minister would be only too happy to oblige, wouldn't he?

Forbes argued that "it is easy to make an unsupported reply to the charges" and was "sure the House is quite willing to hear what the Public Service has to say in its defence" (Hansard 207: 404).

But before we start talking about the Labour Party—a subject which, as you will readily admit, always takes time and occasionally thought—let me ask the feminine section of the community, as woman to woman, just one simple and straightforward question. Do you, or do you not, know what an Auditor-General is? If you don't, you have no real reason to blush for yourselves. I didn't myself, until this afternoon. After hearing Mr. Coates, Mr. Forbes, Mr. Holland, and about sixteen others discuss the matter, I'm beginning to have a faint—a very faint—glimmering of an idea as to what the Auditor-General is, but I still don't know why: and what's more, I believe that Mr. Coates himself sometimes wonders.

Listen. You have all, at some time or another, caught some glimpse of the precincts of a Government-owned and Government-run Department—even if it was only the Prisons Department. You have seen, and, if you are really respectable citizens, trembled before various splendid-looking gentlemen, clad in brass buttons and red tape, who seem to have nothing in the world to do but sit about in revolving chairs and say, "Well, and what might you want now?" to such shivering mortals as dare to approach them. You wouldn't think, would you, that there existed a Personage with power sufficient to make these individuals shake in their well-blacked shoes? Well, somewhere in an eyrie in the heart of Wellington dwells the Auditor-General. Every now and again, just when unsuspecting officials are settling down to a quiet and comfortable little nap, he swoops[.] Office boys have been known to run—yes, positively run—when they have seen him on the far horizon. He has right of access to the accounts of all State-owned Departments, and is, on the whole, an exceedingly dangerous individual.

But there's just one drawback about adopting as one's vocation in life the coldly discovering and boldly uncovering of unpleasant facts. One's sense of proportion is apt to become just a trifle distorted. One sees an incipient burglar, bigamist and Sabbath-breaker in every shivering office-boy who has unlawfully confiscated and made away with a rubber band. One becomes suspicious of Sunday-school teachers—and, if one is an Auditor-General, one's lot in life is to set down one's suspicions in black and white, mostly black. And that was what Mr. Coates was objecting to and it was his objections that he wanted to lay on the table.

Do you know I've an idea that we have actually been talking seriously? Well, at least one somewhat amusing incident cropped up during the debate. Mr. Parry, going over the Auditor-General's very black list of official depredations, to which Mr. Coates had taken strong exception, came to the matter of expenditure on wine. "£9 for wine," said Mr. Parry, waving his hand with airy grace; "well, of course, that's nothing. That's only a spot."

Hyde misrepresents Parry here, as she went on to acknowledge in her next column, published on 20 August 1925. Parry attributed this view to Coates, noting: "[t]hen we have the item covering the consumption of £9 worth of wine by certain officers. According to the Prime Minister, this also is of no moment; it is just a 'spot'" (Hansard 207: 407).

In a way it seemed quite a quiet and inoffensive little Bill that Sir Maui Pomare, with paternal pride, presented to the House. I refer, as you know if you're really good citizens, to the Nurses' and Midwives' Registration Bill. It floated into the House as softly as a feather, and went off like a 5th of November double-banger.

All this, good people, befell on the night before last, so you must forgive me for offering you a rechauffee

A warmed-up dish; used figuratively to mean something old served up again (Oxford English Dictionary).

The Bill has twenty-nine clauses and some hundreds of subdivisions. Mr. McCombs, Labour's champion bantamweight, was ready and willing to dispute them all, and ask for more.

See McCombs's motion and arguments for new amendments (Hansard 207: 420).

Let us endeavour to explain. (That's what Mr. McCombs was doing, more or less unsuccessfully, for practically the whole of the evening's session.) The Government, or, rather, a Government now both dead and gone, established maternity hospitals in the various big centres of New Zealand at the expense of the Consolidated Fund—known to laymen such as you and I as the nation's cash-box. This was, as you will be ready to admit, a humane and enterprising thing. The hospitals were vitally necessary. Nobody else seemed willing or able to provide them, and so the Government of the day, with fatal good-nature, took the work in hand and built and subsidised the hospitals itself. The consequence is that every small town in New Zealand, from Auckland up, is waiting, cap in hand, for the Government to come along and build and maintain its hospitals out of the Consolidated Fund. There are some people—we name no names—who would, if their houses were on fire and their wives and seven small children chanced to be entrapped in the flames, stand safely outside the burning building and wait for the Government to send along a subsidised fire brigade. It is the principle of the thing, if you follow me, that counts … not the mere women and children. I don't think that that is putting the position too strongly. The women of the backblocks—pioneer women, the salt of New Zealand—are under the present system, in many instances, neglected in this vital matter of maternity cares. And with them suffers the new generation.

Talking of milk has brought me to the question of fluids in general, and the question of fluids in general brings me to Mr. Parry. Peccavi! We have most deeply sinned.

"Peccavi" is an acknowledgement of guilt and Latin for "I have sinned" (Oxford English Dictionary).

His entire existence is, so to speak, spot-less. One might almost guess as much from some of his more arid speeches, mightn't one? Anyhow, I hope that this little explanation will make everybody feel quite happy and comfortable. I dreamed, last night, of poor Mr. Parry walking through long lanes of constituents, every one of whom tapped him fraternally on the shoulder and remarked, "What's yours?" I won't tell you what I dreamed Mr. Parry said in answer to them. This is a family paper.

And now for our suet pudding. Well, suet puddings, apple dumplings, and roast legs of mutton were very much on the mind of our old friend Mr. Monteith yesterday afternoon, and I regret to state that they appeared to be giving him a pain. Somewhere, in the heart of this our city is a building which Mr. Monteith graphically described as a tin shed. And therein, every Saturday morning, little school-girls, charmingly arrayed in white apron and mob caps, congregate for the sole purpose of learning just how to "feed the brute."

From Punch (31 October 1885) and afterwards in common usage.

(Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations).

People have widely divergent ideas on the subject of the Millennium. Some believe that lions are going to roam about the world, looking for opportunities to lie down with lambs.

Cf. Isaiah 11 v. 6.

Mr. Isitt (dubiously): "We won't go home till morning—"

Mr. Holland (grimly determined): "You shan't go home till morning!"

All together (crescendo): "We can't go home till morning, before the break of day."

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers.

The Pickwick Papers, ed. James Kinsley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 108. See also the column for 30 June 1925.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is just exactly what happened not last night but the night before, when the House held an all-night sitting on Mr. Isitt's Bill.

The House adjourned its 20 August sitting at 7a.m. on the 21st after a long debate on Isitt's Religious Exercises in Schools Bill.

"Thank you! Thank you! Thank you, Mr. Speaker!" Why this startling—no—yes—startling outburst, for three successive "Thank you, Mr. Speakers!" betokened such an excessive outbreak of politeness that we positively refused to believe it, even though we heard it with our own two reasonably competent ears. But sure enough, we were perfectly right, for there, as we leaned over the balustrade at the imminent risk of precipitating ourselves in a most undignified fashion on the heads of the excessively dignified legislators beneath, was Mr. Witty, still bowing and bobbing, and, with frigid politeness, repeating his "Thank you, Mr. Speaker!" as we, with some effort, regained our equilibrium and sought to extract from the inquiring eye of Mr. Speaker some explanation of this unprecedented Parliamentary courtesy — unprecedented, that is, in the whole of our very long six weeks' experience. But we derived some satisfaction from the obvious equal bewilderment of Mr. Speaker, who gazed sternly, searchingly, sceptically at Mr. Witty, with an "Order! Order!" trembling on his lips. Then, slowly but surely the light of truth dawned upon us. Mr. Witty, certain that he, at least, could, like a modern Cicero, dispel the clouds of unreason that darkened the souls of his fellow-Senators, had risen to speak, but Mr. Speaker, apparently unaware of the honour that was being accorded the House, had called upon Mr. Atmore to arise from his seat in No Man's Land—beg pardon, I mean the Wilford—or is it Forbes?—National benches–and expound his views on the subject of Mr. Isitt's dear little Bill.

This exchange is not recorded in Hansard but presumably occurred when Atmore rose to speak; see Hansard 207: 514.

For let us from the deep well of our experience make it known unto the uninitiated that Mr. Speaker will not, if he can by any means avoid it, listen to two members of one party in succession. The reason for this is perceptible even to the naked eye. To give ear unto Mr. Fraser directly after Mr. Holland has—for the moment—finished speaking, would be altogether a quite too—well, overpowering, wouldn't it? Mr. Witty, aggrieved that the House, desiring to listen to him, should have to wait while Mr. Speaker indulged his eccentric passion for impartiality, fired off his successive "Thank yous!" with the force and rapidity of a machine gun. We regret to confess that while Mr. Witty's lips said "Thank you!" his eye didn't look it. Is the honourable member aware that the occupants of the Ladies' Gallery are expert mind readers? (N.B.—They need to be.) To return to our point[,] we are wicked enough to regret that Mr. Witty didn't say what he looked, for what on earth is the use of having a perfectly good and undeniably impressive Sergeant-at-Arms all to ourselves, if we never have a chance to use him?

We have read somewhere that Mr. McCombs—bantam-weight champion of the Labour-Socialists, as we not unfittingly christened him—has concealed about his person a mysterious little penny arithmetic book. By the aid of this little book, when it can be found—for without it his muse is silent—he does all sorts of sums in addition and subtraction—usually subtraction, particularly where the Government's merits are concerned. Mr. McCombs, without his Book of Black Magic, feels and looks as lost as a witch without her broomstick. But what I really want to know is this: I am in sore trouble concerning a matter of arithmetical calculation, and feel quite sure that if some kind-hearted person would beg, borrow, or, preferably, steal Mr. McCombs' little Lightning Calculator, I should find in it the formula which I seek as a solvent for the problem at present occupying my mind. The night before last Parliament held an all-night sitting, and if it is really true that Parliament in session costs one whole good English pound per minute, how much did the country pay for the Labour-Socialist eloquence so wastefully expended on Mr. Isitt's Bible-in-Schools Bill? We do not know much about the science of two-and-two-makes-four (or, in Parliament, five or three, just according to where you happen to sit), but subject to correction by Mr. McCombs we have worked it out this way. There are seventeen Labour members, and at half-an-hour each, that makes eight and a half hours, equal, if we haven't forgotten our twice-times tables, to 510 minutes. This, at £1 per minute, runs us into £510, which you and I, dear tax-payer,

Dominion: tax-paper.

Now, here is a question to put on the Order Paper, or, by the consent of the House, we will put it without notice. The country will pay £510 for eight and a half hours of Labour-Socialist eloquence. Will the Minister of Finance place a sum of £1000 on the Estimates as compensation to the victims who listened from the Ladies' Press Gallery? We think we are letting the country off cheap at the price.

Much as I would like to discuss Mr. Isitt's inoffensive little Bill (I know that the infant was perfectly inoffensive, because Mr. Isitt said so),

Isitt referred to the main point of contention in his Bill as "that innocent conscience clause of mine" (Hansard 207: 502).

Imagine, just for the sake of argument, that you have partaken of a choice little supper of lobster, salmon mayonnaise, mince pies, Stilton cheese, and oyster patties. Very good. Having imagined all that, you will next proceed to imagine that you have retired to your attic and are reclining in the arms of Morpheus. (It's perfectly all right; Morpheus is only an ancient and superannuated Greek god, whose job, like that of certain M.P.'s we could mention, was to put people to sleep.) But instead of finding yourself drowsily and dreamily contented, you are troubled with a really horrible succession of nightmares. In the first one, you are chased up your bedroom wall by a pink wallaby with purple spots, and in the last—horror upon horror—you see yourself as the Minister of Internal Affairs. You are sitting in the House on pins and needles, and everybody within sight or hearing is arguing as to whether your carefully-prepared estimates are the work of a criminal lunatic, or just of somebody who is a little—how shall we put it?—"saft."

For other uses of Scots dialect, see the columns for 4 July 1925, 16 July 1925 and 2 September 1925.

Somebody has, in a moment of temporary mental aberration, introduced an opossum into your native land. A Parliamentary authority upon opossums immediately rises to show you just what an undesirable immigrant this seemingly inoffensive and respectable-living opossum is, and how vitally necessary it is that you should immediately, and without further puerile discussion of the matter, produce a grant for the prevention and cure of opossums.

In fact Field supported protection for opossums on the grounds that their fur generated export revenue; see Hansard 207: 581.

My Children: Once upon a time there was a Babe in the Wood. She didn't always live in the Wood. In the dear old days previous to our story she used to dwell in a nice little model village, where every street, every shop and every inhabitant remained just exactly in its proper place. I mean to say, our Babe in the Wood knew just exactly where she herself and everyone and everything else worth mentioning was and would be, world without end, Amen. Then, one fine day, she took it into her head that she would like to know something about the gloomy and roomy interior of the Wood, which lay just on the fringes of her model village. Every now and again some enterprising villager would, in a moment of temporary mental aberration, get the same idea, and, when the very last glimpse of his coat-tails had disappeared into the Wood, people would shake their heads pessimistically and say, "Poor old So-and-so. He's gone into Parliament."

Yes, that was the name of the Wood. Anyhow, the Babe of our Story was prevailed upon by Black Magic to enter the extreme outskirts of the Wood. And therein she heard an assembly of—would it be impolite to call them "Wise Old Owls"?—discussing the extremely grave matter of whether a certain motion (of which, as our serial stories remark, more anon) should or should not be carried. After listening to this debate for about three hours on end, the Babe in the Wood just put one hand to her aching brow and staggered out into the sunshine and the fresh air. This last, by the way, was such a marked change from the hot air in the Wood that she caught a chill and hasn't got over it yet. Just as she had reached the borders of the black and gloomy Wood she met a great big Labour-Socialist bear. I mustn't tell you what his name was, but the Legislative Council doesn't like his voice, nor yet the use he makes of it. He looked at her in a have-I-or-have-I-not-breakfasted-yet sort of a way, and, very politely, growled "Good afternoon."

She desisted from shaking in her shoes for a sufficient length of time to inquire, "Please, kind sir, can you tell me just exactly where I am?" (For, as you've already guessed, the Babe very rapidly and completely got lost in the Wood.) He scratched his head for a moment, and then, with great certainty and absolute conviction, told her just exactly where she was. The Babe thanked him politely, and then went further on her way; and all of a sudden, a Reform Party knight-errant, dressed all in shining and absolutely milk-white armour, stepped out from behind some trees. (I mustn't tell you what his name was, but he is partial to buttonholes.)

Possibly Nash; see the column for 14 August 1925.

Let me tell you just exactly how everything came about. Yesterday afternoon, when looking at my Order Paper, which is a document prepared expressly for the misleading of unsophisticated outsiders, I came across these words:

Notices of Motion.

The Hon. Mr. Coates is to move: That on and after Wednesday, the 26th day of August, and for the remainder of the session, the Government's business to take precedence on Wednesdays from 2.30 p.m.

And, having read, marked, and inwardly digested the same, I, along with everyone else in the House, including the members, said unto myself, "Aha," or words to that effect. Then I sat back and waited to hear what our Opposition had to say about the matter. You will perhaps be surprised to learn that our Opposition felt that they really had to say quite a lot.

Mr. Hanan, who is, as one might say, in the Forbes-Nationalist benches, but not really of them, put pleasure before business, and expended his allotted time in abusing the Government. As far as I can remember, he stated: (1) That the Government had absolutely no programme worthy of occupying the time of the House and the—ahem!—intelligences of the Nationalist Party.

Hanan said that "[s]o far as passing legislation of supreme importance to the country the present session would prove a barren one. In his opinion it was likely to be, from the point of view of the interests of the great mass of the people, the most useless and unbeneficial in the political history of New Zealand" (Hansard 207: 601).

Sir James Parr (meekly): But what have we done so far?

Cf. Parr: "What have we done so far?" (Hansard 207: 601).

If you suppose that Mr. Hanan was going to interrupt the flow of a perfectly good, or, anyhow, well-sounding speech, just to answer a question like that advanced by the Minister of Education, you don't know your Mr. Hanan. What he really did, was to stop, just for one little minute, in his stride, and give the Minister of Education a serious, well-reasoned and entirely complacent little lecturette on—guess which?—dignity. According to Mr. Hanan, it is beneath the dignity of any Minister to ask pertinent questions which Forbes-Nationalists—or may we be a trifle premature, and say Hanan-Nationalists—cannot answer.

Hanan suggested to Parr that "if he did not interject with such silly remarks he would better uphold the dignity of his office" (Hansard 207: 601).

As for the Labour-Socialists, if they had let such an opportunity slip, there was no saying that before they knew where they were the House would get on to reports, or Estimates, or something that actually looked like business. Mr. Sullivan, running his fingers wildly through his hair, remarked, in tones of indignation (of which he has always a plentiful supply on tap), that he simply didn't know what the Government imagined itself to be doing. When all the

Dominion: al lthe.

Wednesday seems to be the day on which private members can take their little Bills by the hand and lead them, with paternal pride, into the House, therein the applause of listening Senates to command.

Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," lines 59-61.

The Poems of Thomas Gray, William Collins and Oliver Goldsmith, ed. Roger Lonsdale (London: Longman, 1969).

This may all seem to you perfectly plain and simple, and you are probably wondering, in that patient way of yours, just what I found so confusing about the afternoon's proceedings. Well, the hero of our little fairy-tale—I mean the Reform knight-errant with the button-hole—told me that the only part of the Wednesday proceedings which would be cramped as a result of the Prime Minister's motion was the Replies to Questions, which usually occupies practically the whole of every Wednesday afternoon. Private Bills would be given their little airings—–and their still smaller hearings—just as usual. This being so, what in the world was all the fuss about? In the language of our late lamented guests, "I want to know."

The “late lamented guests” were the American naval fleet. The implication is that the phrase is an Americanism.

"We have just listened," said the Minister for Lands, in polite but scathing tones, "to a characteristic speech from the Labour benches."

Cf. McLeod: "We have just listened to a speech characteristic of the Labour benches" (Hansard 207: 758). He was referring to Armstrong's address.

Now, while we hesitate to accuse so important a personage as the Minister of Lands of making a misstatement, partly because it wouldn't be polite, and partly, likewise, because it wouldn't be altogether safe, we really feel it our duty to correct him in just one little particular. If, when he said "we" he meant us—that is, the occupants of the Ladies' Press Gallery—we had not just listened to a characteristic speech from the Labour benches. On the contrary. We don't even know whether, in the Minister's opinion, Labour-Socialist speeches are characterised by their sound common-sense, by their moderation and reasonability, by their justice tempered with mercy, or even by their charming old-world courtesy towards their fellow-members. The reason for our utter and abysmal ignorance upon these all but vital points is really quite simple. We were, until the Minister for Lands most unkindly disturbed us, peacefully sleeping, as innocent as a baby, or perhaps, seeing that there were two of us present, I should say as innocent as twins. The House, dear readers, sat up till half-past two, as ever was, yesterday morning, and we, kept in our seats by a devotion to duty probably unparalleled

Dominion: unparelleled.

I've told you, I think, of those queer little, twisted, inconsequential corridors that wind in and out and round about, and, when they have conducted the unwary traveller to a point wherefrom he cannot, unless equipped with a pocket wireless set, hold any manner of communication with civilisation, simply turn tail and slip away into the darkness.

Hyde might have been consulting this column when she wrote the chapter "The House is in Session" for Journalese. The chapter follows this column in mentioning in sequence the winding corridors, the cigar smoke of the Cabinet Ministers and the beauty of the Native Affairs Select Committee room (p. 39).

Let me here, for the benefit of those who may go wandering and succeed in losing themselves in these corridors, reveal an infallible method of extricating oneself from the labyrinth. You can't walk far along any corridor in the House without becoming pleasantly aware of a faint, fragrant, and unmistakable trail of cigar-smoke—a trail which, in Indian sign-language, announces to the initiated that a Cabinet Minister has passed that way. One has only to stick closely to that trail and one will find oneself, in less than no time, back in the old familiar haunts of men. Cabinet Ministers don't go far from civilisation. Civilisation is, if you follow me, so extraordinarily comfortable.

But let me tell you all about the insides of the Cabinet rooms. Well, even to be a private secretary (a personage usually more aloof and unapproachable that the Ministers themselves) is to live in the lap of Parliamentary luxury. The private secretary's room is beautifully fitted out with big, deep, comfortable sofas—the kind that Mr. Speaker has, upon our frequent solicitations, so thoughtfully provided for the occupants of the Ladies' Press Gallery. (N.B. That last sentence was intended to be ironic.) But the private secretary's room is nothing—positively nothing—to the sober magnificence of the room in which the Cabinet meets to discuss business, and fat cigars, and—er—well, other matters of interest.

The walls are panelled in cedar and maple, the gift of the Canadian Government, the room is lighted with swinging lamps of alabaster, and the couches—Oh, the couches! As a general rule, I don't believe in bribery and corruption—one is so apt, don't you know, to get found out—but I really do think that the occupants of the Ladies' Gallery would feel rather kindly towards the individual who succeeded in securing similar divans for their use. Imagine, if you can, the spectacle of those highly dignified ladies who, as a general thing, spend their time in looking as if they were listening to Labour-Socialist speeches, solemnly endeavouring, at the instance of their guide, to find out just how high the Ministerial couches would, given due provocation, bounce. You can't? Well, I didn't really think you'd be able to. But that is just exactly what happened last night.

Then, hidden away in an entirely different part of the building, is the room for Native Affairs. Never tell me again (if you thought of so doing) that the architect who saw to the internal affairs of the House hadn't an imagination. The room for Native Affairs is the gift of various Maori chiefs, and is built to represent the inside of a Maori whare. Paua

Dominion: Pawa.

Once before I told you something of the wonderful view from the roof of the House—but to really get some idea of its beauty, one has, by dint of much exertion, to climb thereon on a starry night. Far below are the dark streets and little yellow lights of the town. Beyond them, the quiet black harbour waters, and lights that twinkle, clear-cut and cold as stars, over on Petone beach. From yet another point of vantage, one can look down, in a fashion which would make a cat burglar dizzy, into a little shut-in courtyard wherein one half-sees

Dominion: one-half sees.

That, gentlemen, is what our dignified Prime Minister looked, sounded, and, I'm quite sure, sincerely felt like during the course of yesterday afternoon's proceedings. And what in the world, you may ask, can these misfortunes possibly have been—you who really believe that a Prime Minister's life is, so to speak, "to sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam, and feed upon strawberries, sugar and cream."

Cf. "Curly Locks, Curly Locks," lines 1-8.

The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, ed. Iona Opie and Peter Opie, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

I have no doubt that the complaint has its proper scientific name, not to mention the many altogether improper and unscientific terms which Ministers see fit to use in speaking of it. But I think, for our purpose, it will suffice to call the disease "Amendmentitis." Mr. Sidey was, if I remember rightly, the first victim stricken of the plague, which, by the way, has frequently proved absolutely fatal—to a man's political chances. Mr. Atmore took the complaint with the readiness and cheerfulness of a small schoolboy who goes out and purposely catches the measles, in confident expectation of release from his home-lessons, and a period of blissful idleness and black-currant jellies.

It is unclear exactly which speeches of Sidey's and Atmore's Hyde is referring to but it seems likely that they occurred during the debate on supply for the railways. See for example Sidey's speech (Hansard 207: 708-11) and Atmore's question (Hansard 207: 745).

If we hadn't been unwise—no, I mean humane—enough to modernise our institutions, by this time practically the whole of the Opposition would have been carefully removed and deposited in some suitably distant and isolated spot. This, of course, is altogether too drastic a proposal to gain much support in these somewhat effeminate days. But I do think that in the more aggravated, and yet more aggravating cases of amendmentitis, a policy of strict isolation might justly be adopted. The victim could be made quite comfortable in some suitably secluded place—say, a padded cell—and kept upon a strictly vegetarian diet until, under the tender care and loving kindness of supervising Ministers, he returned to health and sanity—or, anyhow, to normality—once again. In all seriousness, I ask honourable members whether they don't think that this measure would save them time and the country trouble?

Just for the moment I think we'll leave this really painful subject. Before we really settle down to being serious-minded and sober for the rest of the afternoon, I'd like to tell you about a little contretemps which seemed rather amusing to me, though it almost brought tears to the eyes of Mr. Forbes, the Leader of our unhappy Opposition. It was at that stage of the proceedings when, Mr. Speaker having made a hasty yet dignified exit from the House, members were composing themselves to look as if they were listening to the Estimates of the Customs Department. Mr. Forbes arose with a sob in his voice, and, judging by his elocution, a lump the size of a potato in his throat, and wanted to know why the Prime Minister hadn't let him know the ghastly details of the day's proceedings beforehand.

Forbes "wished to protest against the very little notice given to members of that side of the House [i.e. the Opposition] in regard to the classes that were going to be taken on the estimates" (Hansard 207: 817).

To return to Oliver Cromwell—no, I mean to Mr. Forbes. Something about his speech seemed, in some inexplicable way, to get upon the nerves of the Minister for Health, who, by the way, doesn't strike one as being a particularly nervous person. I mean to say, he doesn't give a close and realistic imitation of a cat on hot bricks every time an Opposition member criticises the policy—or non-policy—of his much-maligned party. I have even seen him drop quietly off to sleep during a speech by the Leader of the Labour Party. Unthinkable, isn't it? But on this particular occasion, something—perhaps it was the weather—affected his philosophic calm to such an extent that he was moved to reply with some vigour to Mr. Forbes. He declared, amid a shocked silence (yes, silence) from the Labour-Socialist benches, that the hon. member had snivelled from the beginning to the end of his speech, and that a pet name which would just fit the afore-mentioned hon. member nicely would be "Snivelling George."

These were Pomare's exact words; see Hansard 207: 817. Hyde relates the anecdote again in Journalese, p. 39.

However, leaving Mr. Forbes all alone with his injured dignity, let us proceed with the next disorder of the day—Mr. Veitch. Mr. Veitch is a very cross man indeed. His idea is that one might just as well, if not better, be the father of a particularly noisy set of twins as adopt a Parliamentary career. A member has, as a general thing, to stay more or less awake—mostly less—until the small hours of the morning, and then, like as not, return home to find himself locked out, and forced to spend the remainder of the darksome hours on a cold, hard doorstep.

Veitch complained passionately about the way the Opposition was treated and said that he could "see no reason why the House should be driven so hard" (Hansard 207: 818).

Talking of the member for Avon. I regret to inform you that he is the latest victim of that peculiarly catching complaint referred to at the beginning of this little discourse. Within the last two days he has, to my certain knowledge, moved two amendments with the view of reducing estimates—and goodness only knows how many others while I have been—er—unavoidably absent.

Sullivan moved for a £5 reduction to the Customs Department estimate on 28 August (Hansard 207: 821) and a £4 reduction to the railways estimate on 26 August (Hansard 207: 744).

"It is the soft answer that turneth away wrath."

Cf. Proverbs 15 v. 1.

The other day, when the House went into committee to further worry that very dry, and, according to our Opposition, completely meatless bone, the Estimates, a very angry Leader of His Majesty's Opposition arose, and with scowling visage denounced Mr. Coates for an infinite variety of sins of omission and commission, more numerous than the tears which the Heavens so justly rain down upon this sinful city. Mr. Coates, we were told, had deliberately, and with fell intent, misled Mr[.] Forbes concerning what items of Estimates he intended to take. He was driving the House to work as ruthlessly as Tamerlane did those prisoners whose skulls he happened to want for the fortification of his barbarian city[.]

Tamerlane (1336-1405) was an important Tartar military leader who left behind piles of skulls at sites that he had conquered.

At all events, a mild deluge of protest broke around the smiling Minister from all quarters of the Opposition benches. Oddly enough, Mr. Coates, whose Parliamentary motto appears to be, "Never mind the weather!" didn't seem unduly oppressed. He might, in his smiling unconcern, have been fully equipped with gum boots, oil-skins, and a trusty old sou'-wester. But dear me, if we hadn't been so case-hardened as regards Parliament, and if the Prime Minister were not so well-known to our extremely experienced eyes and ears, we should have peeped over the balustrade, expecting to behold some outlandish creature with cloven hoofs, horns on his head, smoke (not cigar smoke) issuing from his lips, and, of course, a beautifully curly tail. I'm not sure that we didn't permit ourselves the luxury of a hasty glance—but the Prime Minister, probably anticipating some such move on the part of the Ladies' Gallery, had carefully concealed his cloven hoofs (or were they merely plain patent leather shoes?) under a convenient chair. Then rose the Minister of Health, eager, as ever, to come to the rescue of his colleague, and, as we have already politely intimated, he succeeded in somewhat "putting his foot into it"

See Pomare's comment in the column for 29 August 1925.

When I say that real work was resumed, you must be careful not to take me too literally. What I mean to say was that the House, under the Prime Minister's gently persuasive hand, finally got into its working stride—or shall we be unkind and say amble? It was scarcely to be expected that the House would come through an afternoon on Estimates without somebody moving one of those amendments. Somebody did. I forget who it was, and I forget what his amendment was all about. What's more, I strongly suspect that the hon. member, whoever he happened to be, doesn't remember himself. What I do remember is that during the division a rather amusing little incident occurred which may possibly give you some insight into the psychology of the individual who first sat down, and, with a wet towel wrapped tightly round his head, thought out the forms and ceremonies which you and I reverence under the name of Parliamentary procedure.

You must know that after the doors have been locked for a division—and, I suppose, sentinels posted at each one, to see that no unauthorised person dares to peep through the key-hole—no member is allowed to speak without a hat, cap, toque, or, in an emergency, a grandmother's bonnet firmly fixed upon his head. Don't ask me the whys and wherefores of this regulation. Ask Mr. Speaker. He knows everything, except how uncomfortable the benches in the Ladies' Press Gallery feel during an all-night sitting … But we are digressing. As I was saying, this regulation may be very proper and exceedingly Parliamentary, but to frivolous people like you and me it's just a little amusing. I'm inclined to think that Mr. Holland agrees with me. Oddly enough, it was Mr. Holland, who, on this occasion, was seized upon by the cosmic urge to get up and contradict somebody—even Sir John Luke. Sir John Luke, being wise in his generation,

Cf. Luke 16 v. 8.

See also the column for 23 July 1925.

Seeing their leader attempting to face the cold and wintry eye of the Chairman of Committees, minus that hat which a wise Parliament designed to shield him from the icy blast, two or three of the Labour members made haste to proffer the shelter and hospitality of their headgear. Driven into a corner, Mr. Holland hastily selected a dashing grey Stetson, which, perched jauntily over his left eyebrow (beyond which it absolutely refused to descend) gave him a rakish air altogether unbecoming to so important a personage as the Leader of the Labour Party. Perhaps Mr. Holland felt this to be the case, for towards the end of his little speech he boldly removed the hat from his head, and, daring whatever light-nings or thunderbolts the Chairman of Committees might think fit to send his way, finished his speech bare-headed. Mr. Young, the chairman in question, did indeed venture a mild remonstrance, but he has, it appears, a sympathetic heart, and an understanding of what is or isn't beneath a Labour member's dignity.

These events are not recorded in Hansard, but were noted by another correspondent; see “Looking Down: Notes from the Gallery,” Christchurch Sun, 31 August 1925, p. 8.

Oh, by the way, before we forget, let us tender our heartiest congratulations to Mr. Nosworthy, Minister of Agriculture. Mr. Nosworthy is, as you doubtless realise, quite the most distinguished man in Parliament to-day. I know that's rather a daring, not to say dangerous, remark to make, but what other Minister, however much of a trier he

Dominion: be.

Really, I don't think it's altogether fair, in this bleak and wintry weather, to keep the unfortunate victims—I mean occupants—of the Ladies' Gallery, sitting aloft muffled up to their eyes (but not, of course, to their ears) listening to lukewarm eloquence from the Forbes-Nationalist benches, icy and cutting criticism from Labour-Socialist quarters, and frigid politeness from the Ministerial zone. It's enough to make our teeth c-c-chatter in our heads. Sometimes we are ruthless enough to wish that some unforeseen accident would happen to the highly up-to-date heaters situated at the back of the benches generally occupied by our Labour-Socialists, thereby causing their teeth to chatter in their heads. Because then, don't you see, their tongues would be able to.

This isn't, as you might erroneously suppose, "sheer windictiveness

This phrase is a reference to Dickens’s Tony Weller. See the column for 6 August 1925.

But bide a wee, and all things shall be made clear unto you.

"Bide a wee" is a Scottish phrase meaning "stay a while." For other uses of Scots dialect, see the columns for 4 July 1925, 16 July 1925 and 22 August 1925.

You may ask who, in the name of all that's wonderful, started a mere unmathematical woman working out problems in mental arithmetic such as the foregoing. Well, I will be frank with you. It was

Dominion: as.

However, Mr. McKeen's little statement was quite in accordance with the very finest traditions of Parliament, where, as everyone knows, one may say that one's opponent's policy is a policy of murder, thuggism, Sabbath-breaking and petty larceny; that a Government swam into office on a sea of tears shed by widows and orphans, and retained above-mentioned office by consistent policy of bribery and corruption which shrank not even from the extreme measure of securing the poor man's vote by standing him glasses of—shall we say ginger-pop? One may, and quite frequently does say all this, and more, but woe betide the rash individual who so much as whispers that a particular opponent isn't, in some respect, any better than he ought to be. For such the Sergeant-at-Arms lies in wait, and the Mace takes on the capacity of a bludgeon. Mr. Lysnar was guilty of a faux pas in this direction, and look what's happened to him. A Commission has been sitting on him at every possible opportunity ever since.

But, dear me, here we've been getting highly excited all over nothing at all, and quite forgetting to explain the intimate connection between Mr. McKeen and mental arithmetic. Well, it's like this. Somehow or other the hon. member's feet strayed on the slippery path of arbitration awards, and before anyone could stop him he had produced a stump of indelible pencil and worked out just how much higher the high cost of living was now than in 1914, and how inadequate the Government's wage increases were to cope with the situation.

See Hansard 207: 852.

Hurrah! What do you think has happened since I saw you last? The Forbes-Nationalist Party has been and gone and got a policy. Not a life insurance policy, though, as you were saying, that might be a very suitable precaution for the honourable gentlemen to take—times are hard, you know, times are hard—but a real, live political policy. The policy, which was first announced by the Honourable Mr. Buddo, consists of just two words. And the words, dear friends, are these: "Cheer up!" Well, I do think that that's by far the most sensible thing I've heard from the Forbes-Nationalist benches during the whole of the long time (or does it only seem long?) that I have sat in the Ladies' Press Gallery. The policy is just the very thing that the Forbes-Nationalists need. If ever a party wanted cheering up—however, let that pass.

But I wonder, don't you, who has been putting this "Cheer up!" idea into the innocent minds of Mr. Forbes and his friends? I'll tell you my theory on the matter. Mr. Forbes has been reading "Pollyanna."

Pollyanna, by Eleanor H. Porter, was published in 1913.

Last night the House spent hours—it seemed years—in consideration of the land policy—past, present, and future.

See the debate on the Land and Income Tax Amendment Bill (Hansard 208: 35-46).

The difference between the freehold (sponsored by the Government) and the lease-in-perpetuity, favoured by Mr. Forbes, if not by Mr. Wilford, may seem to our untrained intelligences a little fine. Under the freehold, you can hold your land, if by some unforeseen chance you happen to have any, for ever and a day. A lease-in-perpetuity entitles you to a mere holiday trip of nine hundred and ninety-nine years. The Opposition seemed very worried about what was going to happen at the end of that time—but really, dear readers, since it is quite probable that by that time you and I, and even Mr. Forbes will not be here, why worry?

Once upon a time, in the dim and distant days of your early childhood, you were probably frivolous enough to enjoy the adventures of "Alice in Wonderland" as set forth by Lewis Carroll. You remember that particular chapter which referred to a certain Mad Hatter's tea party, and gave a graphic little account of the rude behaviour of a dormouse invited thereto? The dormouse, if you remember, had developed an annoying little habit of curling up and going to sleep inside the teapot when bored, and, worse still, of waking up to interpose cryptic little remarks at just exactly the wrong minute?

Cf. Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, ed. Roger Lancelyn Green (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 60-68. See also Robin Hyde, Journalese (Auckland: National Printing Company, 1934), p. 10.

Of course, there is no reason whatever why we should descend upon poor Mr. Witty, and hold him up as a horrible example of Parliamentary somnolence. It is a recognised thing in the House that any and every member can, if he feels so disposed, put his feet on his bench, settle a cushion yet more comfortably under his head, and, with the tacit consent of Mr. Speaker, link arms with Morpheus and descend into the poppy fields of sleep until forcibly ejected therefrom by the Sergeant-At-Arms.

But to return to our muttons—I mean to our dormouse.

Cf. François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel.

The phrase is a translation of the proverbial French phrase "Revenons à nos moutons," meaning to return to the subject at hand.

Gargantua and Pantagruel, trans. Sir Thomas Urquhart and Pierre Le Motteux (London: David Campbell Publishers, 1994), p. 26. See also column for 6 August 1925 and 20 August 1925.

The proposal is this: Why doesn't some gentleman of the old school—the woods, as you know, are full of 'em—compile and publish a book of Parliamentary etiquette? It could be bound in vellum and issued in three volumes. By this means we could make sure that all the very best people would read enough of it to be able to talk about it—and, needless to state, M.P.'s must, whether they like it or not, be included among the very best people. For instance, a member desires (our book must prepare for the most remote contingencies) politely to indicate that an honourable colleague is, for reasons of policy, drawing a veil around that undraped lady, Truth. Instead of bringing down the wrath of Mr. Speaker on his head, and having to withdraw his rude statements and couch them in different language, he simply says, "Book of Etiquette, chapter so-and-so, verse thus-and-thus." His honoured friend, discovers the place, and, with the aid of spectacles and a lexicon, deciphers the phrase, "All men are …. "You see the idea?

Have you ever heard "the crack of the Party Whip?" You hear it at divisions. Talking of divisions has brought to my mind some of the most important factors in Parliamentary life, factors which, up to the present time, we have quite neglected to mention. I refer to the Whips of the House. Don't be alarmed. Mr. Speaker doesn't, much as he would frequently like so to do, indulge in corporal punishment for refractory members. The S.P.C.A. have absolutely no case at all. The Whips are simply those members of the three parties deputed to keep their fellow-members on the job. And that, if one can judge by the strained and harassed expression which sometimes flickers across their countenances, is quite a little task.

It is quite amusing, just before the division time, to hear the Party Whips cracking—jokes. Mr. Dickson, Whip of the Reform Party, when shepherding his sheep past the Labour-Socialist benches to the lobbies, reminds me of Moses conducting the Children of Israel through the Red Sea.

Cf. Exodus 14 v. 21.

Members listen just exactly like three years' children when Mr. Dickson turns the full power of that hypnotic eye upon them. Sometimes, indeed, they look even smaller.

Then, of course, there are the Whips of the Nationalist and Labour Parties, both of whom deserve a full chapter to themselves, if only we had space. Mr. Ransom, Nationalist Whip, rounds up his little flock with the bustle, enthusiasm, and general excitement of a young, hard-working, and earnest sheep-dog. Of course, divisions aren't the only times when party Whips come in extremely handy. If there is any little matter to be arranged—if, say, the House is tired, and just longing to go home and forget all about politics, the Whips must attend to the matter. It is quite one of the novelties of Parliament to watch the tentative proposals for an adjournment slowly crystallising into "arrangements." For instance, many a time and oft have we looked down from tower and battlements, and noticed the Labour Whip, Mr. Sullivan, who is patently, not to say blatantly, of Irish extraction, "putting the comether" on some would-be talkative Minister.

To put one's comether on: to exercise persuasion or coaxing on (Oxford English Dictionary).

"Mr. Speaker!" The stentorian tones of our be-medalled and incontestably impressive Sergeant-at-Arms come ringing through the House. Chattering tongues (even those appertaining to the occupants of the Ladies' Press Gallery) cease their idle chatter. The above-mentioned Sergeant-at-Arms, whose voice precedes his august bodily presence, marches solemnly in front of Mr. Speaker and the latter, bewigged, begowned, absolutely unsmiling, and oh! so dignified, takes his stand on the dais. Standing as stiffly to attention as the little tin soldier in the fairy-tale, the Sergeant-at-Arms slants the Mace at a positively dangerous angle across his stalwart shoulder. We indulge in an undignified wish that a mosquito would come along and bite him on the nose—just to see how he would behave under the circumstances. Mr. Speaker takes his prayer-card in his hand, looks down his nose, with gaze of serious intent, at the great statesmen to whom is entrusted the destinies of this—ahem—unduly favoured country, and then solemnly prays for the Dominion. And the occupants of the Ladies' Gallery understand. It is meet that Mr. Speaker should pray for our welfare—under the circumstances.

"Are there any petitions?"

Hansard does not record any petitions on 8 September.

Slowly, solemnly, with that gravity due unto his eminent position, Mr. Speaker arises. "Is it the pleasure of the House that this petition be received notwithstanding the informality pointed out? I take it" (scrutinising the Labour-Socialist benches with an anxious eye) "that the House is agreed."

Just once in a while a member is not content that his cherished petition (a petition, dear reader, frequently means votes) shall be merely presented at Court. At least once during the present session an honourable member has preferred a request that his petition be read to the long-suffering House. The ambitious one was the member for Christchurch South, Mr. Howard. Mr. Speaker, with an air of almost supernatural patience (one day that patience is going to explode with a loud report) inquired whether the petition was a long one. With his tongue somewhere in the vicinity of his cheek, Mr. Howard replied to the contrary. Thereupon, for what seemed to us aeons of time, but what, according to the clock, was so many minutes (Parliament at £1 per minute equals £20 per twenty minutes) the Clerk droned through a document which proved to emanate from six citizens of the Holy City of the Plains who, taking themselves with a seriousness, were protesting with solemn gravity about Mr. Isitt's Religious Exercises in Schools Bill.

These events are not recorded in Hansard.

Some day we will endeavour to tell our readers something about these petitions—about the world-wide, almost universe-wide range of their scope, from protests against Bills to modest little requests inviting the Government to present to the petitioner an insignificant fortune of some £30,000. Then there are the annuals—very, very hardy annuals. Prime Ministers may come and may—in fact sometimes must—go. Parliaments themselves fade into memories that are but as a midsummer night's dream.

See also the columns of 30 June 1925 and 10 July 1925.

"I have a message from His Excellency the Governor-General." Mr. Speaker delivers himself of this information with an air of reverential importance very proper to the occasion. Before he has finished speaking, the House, with a look in its eye which seems to say Oh, dearie me,What a life of misery,

I have been unable to trace this allusion.

"I move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee of Supply." In the twinkling of an eye, Mr. Speaker, gathering his august petticoats around him, has disappeared through the door, and the House, relaxing with some degree, look around in a "Now-we'll-have-a-little-business" kind of fashion. But above all things let us not be premature. Whom have we here? And

Dominion: An.

For half an hour or so, as is usual when the hon. member for Lyttelton speaks, the occupants of the Ladies' Gallery sit dazed beneath a blinding, not to say deafening rain of figures like the Roman sentinel who stuck grimly to his post through the eruption of Vesuvius and subsequent destruction of Pompeii.

Cf. Henry Abbey, "The Roman Sentinel," lines 2-6.

Henry Abbey, The Poems of Henry Abbey (Kingston, NY: Henry Abbey), 1885.

A kind of spasmodic shudder seizes upon the frame of the unfortunate Minister for Railways as he hears an eager, "Mr. Young! Mr. Young!" issuing forth from the gloomy (yes, at the moment extremely gloomy) depths of the Reform benches. He knows just what is coming next. So do the occupants of the Ladies' Press Gallery. It is Mr. Lysnar, member from and most distinctly for Gisborne. Mr. Lysnar doesn't, just at the moment, want reform. As far as he is concerned, the Government can, if they wish, sit tight, smile polite, and positively refuse to reform anything or anyone, even Mr. Nosworthy, provided—there is always that insignificant little provided, isn't there?—that they will immediately set to and furnish Gisborne with a railway of its very own. In impassioned tones, the hon. member beseeches the Government to remember its solemn vows, and, when flinging sops to various Parliamentary Cerberuses,

In Greek and Latin mythology the proper name of the watch-dog which guarded the entrance of the infernal regions, represented as having three heads. Used allusively, esp. in phrase, to give a sop to Cerberus (so as to stop his mouths for the moment: cf. Æneid VI. 417) (Oxford English Dictionary). See also the column for 31 July 1925.

When we say that there was none, dear readers, we mean that by the time the four Labour members had quite, quite finished talking, there wasn't so much as the accusing ghost of a Minister within sight. We don't, on the other hand, mean to insinuate that the Labour-Socialists in question, becoming somewhat enthusiastic over their little discussion, arose en masse, slew the Ministers, and buried their bodies under the bed—we mean under the benches. No, no! Not at all. Hard words, as somebody or other has so rightly put it, break no bones—otherwise, long ere this time our Ministers would have been reduced to the spineless condition of molluscs.

But let us, contrary to all Parliamentary procedure, make ourselves perfectly clear. As Labour member after Labour member arose in his seat with the promptitude and certainty of your favourite brand of baking powder, the Ministers simply—how shall we put it—took up their beds and walked. The consequence was that the members in question were left to waste their sweetness—or, to be more correct, their sourness—on the desert air.

Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," lines 55-56.

The Poems of Thomas Gray, William Collins and Oliver Goldsmith, ed. Roger Lonsdale (London: Longman, 1969).

For some time past we have wondered, in a vague, bewildered sort of way, about the whys and wherefores of a certain old-established Parliamentary custom. You must know that the Hansard reporters, alone of the great New Zealand public, are permitted to sit at the very feet of the House of Representatives while aforesaid House is sitting. They (the Hansard reporters) have neat little tables and swinging chairs provided for them, and there, day in and night out, they sit scribbling away in a fashion which makes the sympathetic observer wonder just how often they have to be inoculated against writer's cramp. (N.B.—If you really want to know all about Parliamentary English as she is spoke,

The phrase comes from the title of a 19th century Portugese book that was intended to act as a phrase book for tourists. The book's publication in English under the title English as she is Spoke occurred in London in 1883.

We can testify to the fact that we have seen Mr. Holland—yes, even Mr. Holland—duck as though some justly irate Minister had been impolite enough to aim a number nine boot at his head. But such, dear readers, cannot possibly have been the case. Not if we know our Mr. Speaker. We will, in the best Labour-Socialist manner, proceed to answer our question for ourselves. After some thought upon the matter, we have come to the conclusion that even a Hansard reporter may have his feelings, and that honourable members are well aware of this fact. Now, after having made three half-hour speeches during the course of a single afternoon, would it be safe for a member to walk boldly past the desk of the individual who has not only to listen to but to transcribe every single word—except the unparliamentary language—that aforesaid member has used? We ask you! Members, then, bend double in the undignified fashion already referred to simply because they know that if they don't they are liable at any moment to be stunned by a well-aimed ink-pot, or stabbed in the back with a fountain pen.

But we have been following a policy of active digression as regards our four little Labour-Socialist members. The trouble yesterday afternoon, as far as we could gather, which, as you so justly remark, can't have been very far, was all about income tax. Aha! you say, sitting up and taking notice, our faithful Opposition has been keeping watch and ward over us again! The cold, callous, and collected—no, we mean collective—Government has planned to spring yet another unjustifiable tax decrease on the tax rendered unto Caesar by those who, by dint of honest toil and much perspiration, have accumulated something which might figuratively be spoken of as an income.

Cf. Luke 20 v. 25.

Sometimes we have the impertinence to feel sorry for our Prime Minister. As, for instance, when he finds himself called upon to arise, stand forth, and do sums on the blackboard for the benefit of the entire House. At the end of half-an-hour (a period well punctuated by interjections from all sides of the House) he, mentally at least, takes a firm grasp upon his hair, and murmurs faintly to himself, "Oh dear, oh dear! I suppose that two and two do make four. What did you say, Mr. McCombs? Really, Mr. Speaker, and honourable gentlemen of the House of Representatives (though sometimes it bothers me to make out just what you do represent), I think I'll have to leave you to it."

After numerous interjections Coates said "I simply rose for the purpose of saying that the Government gave an understanding this morning that the question would be considered" (Hansard 208: 128).

Mr. O'Brien, member from the wild West (and no wonder it's wild—you'd be wild, too, under the circumstances) takes a turn at the handle. He talks about—guess what? "moneybugs with their maws open for every sixpence."

Cf. O'Brien: "money-bugs who are ready to grasp every sixpence" (Hansard 208: 139).

"But I do trust, Mr. Speaker—I do trust—I do trust—" Slowly, sadly, reluctantly, the occupants of the Ladies' Press Gallery emerged, rubbing their eyes, from a state of blissful unconsciousness to a realisation of the startling fact that the member for Auckland West, Mr. Parry, was on the very point of trusting somebody.

See Parry's speech in Hansard 208: 219, in which he uses the phrases "I trust" and "I do trust" several times.

But not yet was it written that Mr. Speaker, that man of destiny should rise from his senatorial chair and move that the House should there and then, without further shilly-shallying about the matter, adjourn. Not yet were wary Ministers permitted to seek comfortable oblivion over a cup of tea, or, more probably, a corpulent cigar. The House had first to reckon with Mr. Masters.

Between you and me, the mere on-looker is a little puzzled, in these strange and troublous times, as to just why the erstwhile Liberal Party should have adopted the name of Nationalists. A nation, if you follow our line of argument, suggests something with settled ideas, fixed policies, and, above all, boundary lines of its very own. Whereas the Forbes-Nationalists, as far as we can see, haven't a limit among them—although, of course, some impolite people venture to hint that Mr. Masters is that. But what we set out to say is that the Nationalists, if they are a nation at all, are a nation of Nomads—perhaps one of the lost (and now, just at the wrong moment, rediscovered) tribes of Israel. If this be so, Mr. Masters is, politically-speaking, the one, only and original Wandering Jew. One can never quite guess, so to speak, which way pussy is going to jump. Only that stern and uncompromising command, "The ayes will go to the right—the noes will go to the left," makes clear the mystery unto our eyes.

On the night before last, Mr. Masters was, for once in a while, definitely "agin the Government."

Hyde is probably referring to Masters's speech on taxation policy; see Hansard 208: 152-55.

Do you remember how, in the comparatively recent past, we endeavoured to give you some little information as to the number and nature of the petitions so regularly presented to the House? Yesterday afternoon we discovered, somewhat to our surprise, that this formal presentation wasn't the end of them. There was worse to come.

"Mr. Speaker!" "Mr. Speaker!" "Mr. Speaker!" Imagine, if you can, the amazing spectacle of half a dozen respectable and, as a general rule, reverential members of the Reform Party striving to gain the eye and ear of Mr. Speaker with the same insistency sometimes displayed by energetic ladies at auction sales. Some of them, we deeply regret to relate, seemed to find much difficulty in refraining from addressing Mr. Speaker in the simple, terse, effective, but unceremonious terms customarily used in speaking to a refractory errand boy, and drawing down upon themselves an uncompromising "Order! Order!" by remarking "Hi! You there!" to the extra specially honourable member whose eye they desired to catch.

"Mr. Speaker, Sir—," with much pomp, ceremony and regard for the dignified procedure of the House, the successful candidate proceeds to read a report of his particular petitionary protege as transmitted to the House by the committee to which it has been referred. Sometimes he lays great stress upon the fact that the committee has submitted the petition in question for the favourable consideration of the House. Not infrequently, he regrets to state that the committee can make no recommendation. Now, knowing as we do that a petition which has been favourably recommended by committees, may in like fashion be favourably recommended for the next twenty years to come, without anything in particular being done about it, we can't see why the committees don't save time, tears, and tribulation by favourably recommending all petitions given into their tender care. It would please the petitioners, and it couldn't really hurt the Government.

But really, dear readers, you've no idea—we're sure you haven't—of the unceasing solicitude with which our members of Parliament watch over your interests—and, of course, incidentally, over its own. Take an instance. A member of the Nationalist Party, taking a stroll in your paddock (we'll say he is gathering mushrooms for breakfast, which legitimises the trespass), notices a Californian thistle smiling up at the morning sunshine. Does he pass on unheeding? Not if he knows it. He carefully gathers that thistle and stows it away in the pocket nearest his heart. In due time he visits local bodies, ladies' guilds, and mothers' meetings, and points out to them the urgent necessity of the Government's doing something about Californian thistles. He doesn't suggest that you yourselves should roll up your coat sleeves and root it out. Nothing so plebeian. His idea is that the Government should be petitioned for a little fund of, say, £1000, for purposes of experimenting on the defenceless bodies of Californian thistles.

Hyde is referring to an earlier debate. See “Looking Down: Notes from the Gallery,” Christchurch Sun, 17 August 1925, p. 8, for coverage of these comments.

Let us for one moment (or thereabouts), dear reader, pause and consider the mundane matter of Sordid Lucre. We are aware that in even venturing to peep over the borderline of the realms of high finance we are doing a thing both unparliamentary and unwomanly, and that Mr. McCombs will catch us if we don't watch out. However, let's, for once in a while, take a chance and inquire how many of the highly intelligent readers who, spectacles on nose, brood over the daily newspaper reports of Parliament in session, have any idea of the extent and ramifications of that dignified institution for which they, dear simple souls, have the privilege of paying. For, however much astute Parliamentarians may endeavour to obscure the fact, still it is a fact, dear reader, that you do pay, whether you be one of the cloven-hoofed fraternity, so well beloved by our revolutionary Socialists, who presume to own lands, stocks, shares, and, even after the tax collector has quite finished with you, an income, or whether you be numbered among the yet more important class of individuals which discharges the soi-disant simple duties of managing a home (or perhaps it would be more modern to say a two-roomed flat), and bringing up a family, or, at the very least, bringing on a husband. (We had a feeling that if we, disregarding all temptations to fall by the way, kept right on with that sentence, we would one day reach the end.)

Well, as we were carefully explaining to you, every time you purchase some more or less necessary commodity, ranging from a tin kettle to a motorcar (sometimes much the same thing, isn't it?), you pay, through the Customs and also through the nose, not only for the board and keep of those who sit in the seats of the mighty with the privilege of writing the mystic letters M.P. after their names, but also for the upkeep of a whole flock (and when we say "flock" we don't mean a score or so but something that even Mr. Lysnar would recognise as a flock) of messengers who veritably wait hand and foot upon our statesmen, budding, full-blown, and, after a few sessions, generally somewhat "run to seed." So much, indeed, is this the case, that we have it on very credible information that practically the entire House is kept on reducing diet, and exercised, under the expert supervision of a member to whom we shall refer at a later stage of the discussion, three times a day.

But we digress. As we were going to tell you, there are three great branches of service attached to Parliament, and each looks coldly and unapproachably down its nose at the others. This in some measure accounts for the statement that Parliament in session costs the nation (meaning you and me) £1 a minute. These three branches of the Parliamentary roof tree are the Messenger Service, the Commissariat Service, and the Library Staff. To return to our messengers, they appear to be as numerous as the sands of the cold seashore,

Cf. Joshua 11 v. 4.

Once safely installed in the House of Representatives, the duty of the messenger is (1) to assume that look of vacant and uncomprehending importance so much sought after in the very best circles; (2) to keep his weather eye open for the beckoning finger of any member who desires to post a letter, or, more frequently, a hundred letters. (They are prolific letter-writers, these members of Parliament; their constituents see to all that. Every time the old cow falls down a well, or the draught horse breaks its hind leg—however, let us continue with our theme. By the way, it is a somewhat amusing sight to watch the various attitudes—coaxing, commanding, despairing—adopted by members who desire, without attracting undue attention from Mr. Speaker, to catch the eye of a messenger. To hear Mr. Atmore, for instance, say "Messenger!" is quite an education—but not the kind imparted in Socialistic Sunday schools.

Others there are who wait breathlessly at the doors of the Chamber, ready to fetch and carry for these spoiled children of our Legislature; again skilfully guard the main doors against the invasion of the travelling public, intercepting all who presume to enter, shepherding the ladies and the gentlemen into properly water-tight (not hot-air-tight) compartments, and commanding the masculine section of the Mere Public to take, not the shoes from off its feet, but the hat from off its head—and lively with it, now!

Another day, dear reader, we shall tell you something about the other two great branches of the service referred to—but just at present we feel that we really ought to make some passing reference to the business (?) of the day. There's just one little item of Parliamentary expenditure, however, which we really must bring to your notice—it was told us in the strictest of confidence, so whatever you do don't let it go any further. The carpet—that splendiferous carpet which we so often wondered at and admired—cost £2000. Say it over three times slowly backwards, and then sit down and imbibe a glass of lemonade. You feel better now? And why, you indignantly demand, didn't our Labour-Socialists, those apostles of stern, Spartan simplicity, see to it that the House upheld the best traditions of the simple life? Because, my dear innocents, that carpet is Red. It is the reddest thing in Parliament, not even excepting Mr. Holland, and our friends on the Labour benches just couldn't bear to part with it. They overlooked the fact that it is frequently walked over by members of the Reform benches.

We did say something about business, didn't we, a while back? Well, the House has been considering the Report and Estimates of the Health Department, and, with some few exceptions, has been on its very best behaviour.

See Hansard 208: 261-75.

Of course, it was quite inevitable that the estimates should be attended with much talk of toothbrush drill, dietetics, physical culture, etc., etc., and etc. The House, in the person of the hon. member for Avon, waxed quite eloquent over the very serious matters of the diet afforded patients in various institutions.

See Sullivan's speech (Hansard 208: 266).

"Rubbish!"

"Clap-trap!"

"Humbug!"

"Hypocrisy!"

"Rats!"

Can it be—no, surely!— that we actually find ourselves in the sober and dignified company of the legislators of this heaven-endowed country? Is it even remotely possible that they, the pillars of the State, the fathers, we might almost say, the great-grandpapas of the people, should, under any provocation whatsoever, descend to the level of—of—naughty recrimination. Glancing, with pained surprise, around the chamber of the House of Representatives, we immediately discern the twofold reason for this most unparliamentary behaviour on the part of our usually sedate Parliamentarians. The first, and, doubtless, the most potent cause of this thusness is that Mr. Speaker is away.

The Deputy Speaker controlled the debate on 15 September; see for example Hansard 208: 333.

Some time ago, if we remember aright, we indicated that there was yet another reason for the confusion prevailing upon the floor of the House. Our legislators had allowed themselves to be beguiled into a discussion on economics.

The debate was on the Repayment of the Public Debt Bill; see Hansard 208: 319-50.

The qualifying adjectives may be used discreetly according to one's political opinions.

And now do you wonder that we find ourselves to be in urgent need of smelling salts and sympathy? The trouble originated, you must know, through an indiscreet action on the part of the Minister of Finance. Mr. Nosworthy tried to bring in a Bill. He might have known that the Labour-Socialists wouldn't like it. Let sleeping Labour-Socialists lie.

But we have, by dint of much perseverance, come to a decision concerning these long lists of figures which mathematically-minded Parliamentarians are perpetually preparing for the benefit (per-haps!) of a somewhat bewildered public. There is a well-known axiom that figures can't lie. An axiom is something that sounds like gospel if you say it quick and are careful not to think it over. Figures may not, if you insist, be able to lie, but they can be stuffed and enamelled, or maybe subject to just a leetle mite of tight-lacing. When Mr. McCombs gets into figures—which is a frequent and perfectly bewildering occurrence—he—well, he somewhat reminds us of a certain rather funny story. An old Scottish couple, rigid church-goers, were listening one Sunday to the rhetorical efforts of a young candidate for "the meenistry." The flowers of oratory fell thick and fast—just like Mr. McCombs's figures—but of real meat there was very little. At last, the old lady leaned over to her husband and whispered:

"What's his ground, John, what's his ground?"

"Humph," grunted her dissatisfied lord, "he's got no ground—he's swimmin'."

"Elephants are always drawn smaller than life, but a flea is drawn larger."

Swift's exact remark was that "Elephants are always drawn smaller than life, but a flea always larger." The Works of Jonathan Swift, Containing Letters, Tracts, and Poems, ed. Sir Walter Scott, vol. 9 (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable, 1824), p. 242.

Usually, when a member of the Mere Public so much as attempts to pigeon-hole a Parliamentarian, he simply says: "This gentleman is a stalwart Reformer," "This poor soul is a Forbes-Nationalist," or "This misguided man is an Extreme Revolutionary Socialist," and leaves it at that. But, my dear innocents, there are in Parliament divisions, subdivisions, and yet more subdivisions, bewildering to the inexperienced eye but distinct in nature and importance to the Parliamentary mind. For instance, in the matter of seniority alone there are four distinct and unmistakable divisions.

First of all (youth will be served, gentlemen) come those comparatively green and callow members who are still in or about the thirties. These (there are perhaps three of them) are looked upon as the infant phenomena

The "infant phenomenon" was a name given to a young girl in Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby. See also the column for 31 July 1925.

But he does it with the air of one who pats his turbulent but well-beloved offspring on the head. After all, you know, boys will be boys.

And what a pity it is that they do have to grow up! Next in order of youth and innocence come what we might characterise as The Roaring Forties; and my word, don't they! Sometimes (as, for example, when the honourable member for Wellington East gets going), you can hear them half-way down the corridor. It would be fair to assume that fully half of the House hovers more or less wistfully about the boundary line between afore-mentioned Roaring Forties and the still sunlit but somewhat quieter slopes of the Fifties—the time when a Parliamentarian looks anxiously in the glass, and tells himself that it will soon be time for him to think about procuring a portfolio, and settling down to the undeniably sober and respectable life of a Minister of the Crown. But the true salt—and, to be frank, the true cayenne pepper, of Parliament, is found among the Old Stagers. They are a varied lot, these seasoned (as we have already intimated, sometimes highly seasoned) campaigners. Some of them affect the bald spot, the beard, and the gentle yet dignified rotundity of the man of affairs. Others (let us but whisper it), have recourse to wigs, and—dare we say it?—possibly even to stays. And every one of them is full to overflowing of great tales of the days when the world was young and Parliament was something—if not much—like a Parliament. Every now and again, one of the Old Stagers drops quietly and unobtrusively from his place, and the golden days of Massey and Seddon become—a little farther relegated to the pages of Ancient History. But Parliament, be it admitted, looks up to and, if it isn't wrong to accuse an M.P. of sentiment, loves those who are left—and even the frivolous occupants of the Ladies' Gallery know that the House wouldn't be the same without them.

Shut your eyes for one moment, sit perfectly still and try to imagine that you have never seen, heard, or thought of such an unmerciful dispensation of Providence as an M.P. You have the effect? Now open your eyes.

Our scene, good friends and gentles all, is set hundreds of miles away from the refining and ennobling influence of His Majesty's House of Representatives. We are all alone by the sad seashore. It is a particularly dark and moonless night—the sort of night when it seems perfectly right and natural for dark doings to be afoot.

Deep down under the surface of the sea, there is a peculiar, grinding, restless, uneasy kind of a noise. It is the oysters turning over in their beds: they, too, feel in their bones (no, we forgot, they're molluscs and haven't any: well, in their succulent protoplasm), that mischief is brewing. Suddenly there is a glimmer of light—the kind that might quite easily proceed from a burglar's dark lantern—and the crunch of a number nine boot on the shingle. From our point of vantage behind a sheltering rock, we catch a glimpse of a large (but not too large) fur-lined overcoat, and a pair of colossal Wellington boots, with something vaguely resembling a man inside them: in fact, we behold a Prominent Citizen of Auckland. (The expression is Mr. Lee's.) Let us, for the sake of originality, call the afore-mentioned citizen Mr. X. What in the world, we ask each other, rubbing our eyes, can this respectable—this Prominent Citizen of Auckland, Mr. X., be doing out of his bed at this hour of the night? Is he walking in his sleep? Is he—ought we to summon Mrs. X.?

But, lo, while we are still thinking the matter over, our mystery quietly, unobtrusively, without any visible effort, solves itself. Mr. X. panting a little with the intense emotional and physical strain, stoops over and, if you please, proceeds, without further notice to hale forth the oysters—old and young, male and female—from their beds, with a disregard of the common courtesies of civilisation absolutely inexplicable in a prominent citizen of Auckland. We really don't know—we turned our eyes away—whether Mr. X. devoured his unfortunate victims on the spot, or whether he bottled them, stowed them in that conveniently capacious hip pocket and finally consumed them at one of the Saturnalian orgies which go by the name of dinner parties. But this, beyond all doubt, we know. We have it on the authority of Mr. Lee. What more could you want? As Mr. X., his brow wet with dishonest sweat, arose from his labours, his shoulder was seized, with more force than politeness, by the Long Arm of the Law. Chill shudders chased each other up and down his frame as a Voice spo