Finally, I would willingly acknowledge all these little humours of a contested election in a spirit of genial amiability had you not unfortunately broken my jaw and reduced me to a condition of semi-insensibility. * * * * * GOOD NEWS, AND STRANGE TOO! The Northern Railway Company of France, as the _Daily Telegraph_ informs us, has decided to spend four millions of francs in improving its rolling-stock. This move ought to send up all its "stock" in the market. Also there is to be a train of an entirely new pattern, replete with every convenience, running in correspondence with the London Chatham and Dover Company's most convenient continental service. This is first-class (and second also) news for persons about to travel. The _D. T._ further says that "the adoption of bogies will make the running easy." Good gracious! The cutting and running would come quite naturally to most of the passengers on beholding only one "bogey"; but when it comes to "bogies," there would be a general stampede! Very kind of the Northern to "adopt" bogies. Some poor little orphan bogies, left at the door of a Bogey-Foundling Hospital, deserted by their ghostly and unnatural parents, but "adopted" by the spirited Great Northern of France! "Hush! Hush, Hush, it is the Bogey Train!" But no tricks on travellers, spirited Great Northern of France. * * * * * ROUNDABOUT READINGS. I spoke last week of the General Election, more particularly with regard to its influence on the speakers who take part in it. A treatise on this aspect of the matter has yet to be written. One of the main points to be determined will be the amount of influence exercised by the speech, not on its hearers, but on the speaker himself. * * * * * Nothing is more remarkable than the rapidity and definiteness with which a speaker's opinions crystallise during the course of a speech. Let us assume, for example, that a Radical candidate has been approached on the subject of an Eight Hours Bill, and, in order to gain time, has promised to deal with it in his next speech, at the same time giving an assurance of general sympathy. Probably he has not thought much about the question before. In the evening he will speak upon it; and suddenly, to his own intense surprise, he will find himself declaring that all legislation will be vain, all social effort fruitless, until the load of toil that presses on the mass of his fellow-countrymen is lightened, and a universal Eight Hours Bill is carried through both Houses. * * * * *