'It is really very awkward,' said the Cabinet Minister. 'You see I am not in the Railroad Department, nor in the Canal Department, nor in the Emigration Department. I am sure you see that!' he continued hopefully, looking round upon the crowd, who, though they admitted the fact, did not appear to appreciate its deep and intrinsic force. 'But I am quite willing at some future opportunity—indeed, I may say I hope at some opportunity comparatively not distant, to consider the advisability of representing the matter to the heads of certain departments who might be able, in the course of the next but one Septennial Parliament, or' (even more sanguinely) 'I might under favourable circumstances even hope to say, the _next_ Septennial Parliament, to lay the topic before the Government. In the meantime, my friends, consider that such means as you have suggested for alleviating the hardships with which I so profoundly sympathise are not things to be lightly rushed into. You will agree with me doubtless. You will show that fine sense of the propriety of your lots innate in the breast of every Briton, by agreeing with me that canals, for instance, are not things to be lightly rushed into. Emigration, my friends, is not a thing to be lightly rushed into. In the meantime, knowledge, as the good old maxim tells us, never comes amiss, and whatever be the eventual scheme resolved upon by Government for relieving your necessities, you cannot better employ your leisure than in preparatory academic study of the arts of building, railway cutting, and canal-making, and in acquainting yourselves with the principles and methods of emigration, the nature of our different colonial settlements, their situation and productions, during the seven years that must inevitably elapse—' He would have proceeded, but a howl, long and loud, drowned his utterance, and the mob surged forward, driving him back, in a state of bewildered astonishment, into the premises of a fashionable dealer. Various tokens of regard followed him in the shape of rotten eggs and cabbage leaves, which, as the Owl observed in a thoughtful voice, were doubtless symbolical. Then the mob broke up and went on its different ways. Mab and the Owl, following one of its scattered detachments, met another procession, with a drum and trumpets and other instruments, all working their hardest at one of Sankey and Moody's hymns, which procession drew up straightway before the remnant of the mob, and began to convert it. 'What is this?' asked Queen Mab. 'Is it British Polynesians going to a war-dance?' 'No,' replied the Owl. 'It is only the Salvation Army, walking backwards into glory.' 'Come away,' said Mab. 'They are very noisy, these British Polynesians, and the mob makes me miserable. Let us go back.' 'I am ready,' said the Owl. 'I don't wonder that London has this effect on you at first. You are not sufficiently automatic, and a non-automatic mind has always much to contend with.'