The House droned on in conscientious dullness until at last it was roused on the 21st of June by the War Minister’s announcement of the resignation of the Duke of Cambridge, to which I have alluded elsewhere, and an hour or two later it was thrown into the wildest excitement by the defeat of the Government, by a majority of seven, on the supply of cordite. It was but a small majority, but it was enough; and when the paper was handed to Mr. Akers-Douglas the intoxication was mænadic. The Government was out. It was the last Division of the House of Commons in which I was destined to take part, for I was perfectly determined not to stand again. I should have liked the House well enough but for the holidays, which were odious. Primrose League meetings, bazaars, political gatherings in schoolrooms, attended perhaps by a dozen yokels, two or three old women and a little boy, illuminated by a cheap lamp or two, one of which was sure to go out and smell horribly, made life impossible. After a session like that of 1893-94 I felt that I had a right to a little peace. Not a bit of it. Before a week was out there came the old complaint, “We have not seen much of our member lately.” Was I Sir Boyle Roche’s bird? So when the dissolution came I thanked the constituents and made my bow, beaten by the hard work of the holidays. I was glad to have regained my freedom and went back gleefully to my garden, my horses and my turnips; among the latter I include petty sessions, cottage hospital meetings and their kin. But a chapter in life is rarely closed without regret, and a seat in the House of Commons gives a man a sense of being in the swim which he hardly realizes until he has lost it. Even so, he has had a great experience and has gained a knowledge of the working of the machinery of the State which nothing else can give. A Parliament in which one by one almost all the items of the Newcastle[46] programme have been carried into effect, may hardly offer great temptations to an independent man believing in the good old Constitution which made England great. Still it is the governing power of the country; every man should, as far as possible, make himself master of its procedure, and the best road to that end is to endeavour to gain a seat in it. Let him try the experiment for one Parliament, and if, at the end of that time, he does not like it, he can but put out the lights and ring down the curtain—as I did. CHAPTER XXXVIII 1896 SIR JOSEPH HOOKER