The day after the announcement of a birth in a Member’s family a van pulled up at the entrance to the Houses of Parliament containing three different sorts of perambulators. The tradesman who brought them was extremely indignant because the police refused him admission to the House to display their good points and conveniences to the happy father! Poets ask for subscriptions to publish their works, or, enclosing some doggerel verses as samples, appeal for orders for odes for the next General Election. “If you would quote in the House a verse from my volume, _Twitterings in the Twilight_, what a grand advertisement I’d get!” wrote one rhymester to his representative. “You might say something like this: ‘One of the most delightful collections of poems it has ever been my good fortune to come across is Mr. Socrates Wilkin’s _Twitterings in the Twilight_. Could the situation in which the Empire finds itself be more happily touched off than in the following verse of that eminent poet?’ and then go on to quote some lines from my book, which I enclose.” Members who are lawyers and doctors are expected by a large section of their constituents to give professional advice for nothing. If one of these unreasonable persons has a dispute with his landlord as to the amount of rent due, or finds it impossible to recover a debt, he expects, as a matter of course, his representative, if a gentleman learned in the law, to help him out of his difficulty; or, if a doctor, he favours him with long and incoherent accounts of mysterious complaints from which he has suffered for years. The M.P. is also expected to throw oil on disturbed domestic waters. Here is a specimen of a communication which is by no means uncommon: DEAR SIR, Me and the wife had a bit of a tiff last Saturday night, and she won’t make it up. If you just send her a line saying Bill’s all right, she will come round. She thinks the hell of a lot of you since you kissed the nipper the day you called for our votes. But pity the poor M.P. who receives from a female voter so embarrassing a letter as the following: HONOURED SIR, I hear that Mr. Balfour is not a married man. Something tells me that I would make the right sort of wife for him. I am coming to London to-morrow, and will call at the House of Commons to see you, hoping you will get me an introduction to the honourable gentleman. I am only thirty years of age, and can do cooking and washing. AGNES MERTON. P.S.—Perhaps if Mr. Balfour would not have me, you would say a word for me to one of the policemen at the House.