“I have never been guilty,” thundered a member recently, in a fine fury of indignation, “of going to the telephone and impersonating another man, and using the information obtained against him in Parliament under the cloak of privilege. But I must say the honourable member for — stands here self-convicted of that action.” I have not the faintest recollection of what it was all about, but it is characteristic; while the title “honourable,” as it is here used, strikes me as rather a meaningless survival in a democratic country. “Hi don’t call ’im the ’onourable,” I once heard an emphatic political opponent declare. “Hi calls ’im the ’orrible.” “Cabbage-grower!” someone shouted at some public meeting where Mr. Bent was making a speech. “Well, there’s no question about that,” retorted the late Premier beamingly; “the question is, did I, or did I not, grow good cabbages?” The odd thing is that out of all the schoolboy chaff, and the apparently hopeless babel of mere words, such good measures can be evoked. It is somehow like flinging a medley of unappetizing-looking scraps into a casserole, and, rather to one’s own surprise, evoking a good soup—when all the scum has been removed. The State Governor, as the Victoria Year Book remarks bluntly, is only expected to exercise his judgment in assenting to, or dissenting from, or reserving of, any Bills passed by Parliament, and the granting or withholding of a dissolution—either of which measures will, for the time being, render him equally unpopular—or the appointment of a new Ministry. Apart from this, his whole duty consists in looking nice and behaving prettily, while by far the most arduous part of the position rests upon the shoulders of his wife. If I was going to choose a new Governor for Victoria—which somehow no one has even thought of asking me to do—I should not even want to see him, though my interview with his wife would be long and arduous. She must dress beautifully, for she is of little use unless she wears things that other women can copy; but she must give herself no airs, while the complete frankness of the criticism which she will meet with may be gathered, with some amusement, from the following description of a garden fête at Storrington, the State Government House: