The only other interesting place in the Houses of Parliament is the Strangers' Dining Room. This is interesting because the Members there are all terrified lest you should hear what they are going to say. They never know who may be at the next table--a journalist or a Bolshevist or a landowner--and they talk with one eye permanently over their shoulder. It must be very painful. But of course the best time to visit the House is when it is not sitting, because then, if you are lucky, you may sit with impunity on the Front Bench and put your feet up on the table. If you are unlucky you will be shot at dawn. A. P. H. * * * * * [Illustration: _Excitable Tenor_ (_during dispute about the bill_). "BUT, MY FRIEND, YOU NOT KNOW ME WHO I AM--NO? I AM SPOFFERINO. TO-NIGHT I SING AT ZE OPERA--'BUTTERFLY.'" _Waiter_ (_unimpressed_). "UM--YOU _LOOK_ LIKE A BUTTERFLY!"] * * * * * "----'S BOOTS HAVE BEEN IN EVERYBODY'S MOUTH." _Advt. in Local Paper._ We fear the advertiser has put his foot in it. * * * * * LABOUR AND THE RUSSIAN BALLET. I wasn't present at the station when Madame PAVLOVA arrived in London, bringing with her, as I have been assured by six different newspapers, no fewer than three hundred and eighty-five pieces of luggage. But I have seen, thanks to Sir J. M. BARRIE, the transformation which a Russian _prima ballerina_ makes in an English country home, so I happen to know exactly what occurred. I think it deserves to be recorded. Very well then. SCENE--_A Metropolitan railway terminus, though you wouldn't perhaps recognise it, because it looks a little like the interior of a Greek cathedral and a little like the fair at Nijni Novgorod, and the posters have obviously been painted by_ Mr. WYNDHAM LEWIS _or somebody like that. One porter is discovered leaning against an automatic sweet machine designed by an Expressionist sculptor. He is wearing a long mole-coloured smock, and looking with extreme disfavour at his luggage-truck, which has somehow got itself painted bright blue and green, with red wheels. Music by_ J. H. Thomaski. [_Enter L., puffing slowly, the boat-train. The engine and carriages resemble Early-Victorian prints._ Madame PAVLOVA _descends, and in a very expressive dance conveys to the_ Porter _that she has one or two trunks in the guard's van which she wants him to convey to a taxicab_. _Porter._ 'Ow many is there, lady? [PAVLOVA _pirouettes a little more and points three hundred and eighty-five times at the station-roof with her right toe_. _Porter._ Can't be done nohow.