Sometimes the new M.P., returned at a by-election, forgets to bring to the Table the certificate of the return to the writ. This document, which is sent by the Clerk of the Crown to the Clerk of the House, is given to the new Member on application at the Vote Office, in the Lobby, just before the ceremony of initiation, and must be presented to the Clerk of the House at the Table as evidence that he is the person named in the return to the writ as having been duly elected, before the oath can be administered to him. As a rule, therefore, the new Member takes care that he has this indispensable official paper in his possession before he starts to walk, between his two sponsors, from the Bar to the Table. But Hardinge Giffard, afterwards Earl Halsbury and Lord Chancellor, when elected at a by-election in 1877, found on reaching the Table that the little blue document was missing. In his consternation he hurriedly turned out all the contents of his pockets, piling them upon the Table—letters, a purse, some loose coppers and silver, a bunch of keys, a briar-wood pipe—all sorts of things but the essential certificate. In this case the Speaker refused to accept any evidence—not even the testimony of identification by the two sponsors—but the Clerk of the Crown’s certificate that the man at the Table was the man that had been duly returned at the recent election for Launceston. The House, of course, was amused at the spectacle. Happily, one of the Whips who went in search of the missing return found it in the hat of the new Member, under the cross-bench below the Bar, where Hardinge Giffard had sat with his sponsors awaiting the time for the Speaker to make the customary announcement—“New Members desirous of taking their places will, please, come to the Table.”