During the evening the Member who received this strange epistle cautiously ventured into the Central Hall, and, sure enough, espied an eccentric-looking woman in angry controversy with a constable, who was trying to induce her to go away. But she refused to leave, and ultimately found sympathetic companions in the crazy old party who has haunted the place for years in the hope that some day she will induce the Government to restore the £5,000,000 of which she declares they have robbed her, and the other lady, younger, but just as mad, who is convinced that some M.P. has married her secretly and left her to starve, and has come to Westminster to claim him “before all the world.” 3 The Member of Parliament is liable to receive other communications of even less flattering and more exasperating character. Bribes are occasionally dangled before him through the post. Will he allow his name to be used in the floating of a company, or in the advertising of some article of common use or a patent medicine? Will he use his influence in obtaining a Government contract for a certain firm? If he will, there is a cheque for so-and-so at his disposal. In the course of a debate in the House of Commons on the payment of Members, John Burns, for many years a well-known Liberal Minister, evoked both laughter and applause by reading his reply to an offer of £50 received during his previous service as a Labour representative if he obtained for a person in Belfast a vacant collectorship of taxes. “Sir,” he wrote, “you are a scoundrel. I wish you were within reach of my boot.” But the sane and the righteous give the M.P. more annoyance than the knavish and the crazy. Think of the numerous local functions—religious, social, and political—to which the Member of Parliament is invited! When a meeting is being organized in the constituency, naturally the first thought of its promoters is to try to get the Member to attend. The more conspicuous he is in Parliament, and therefore the more likely to attract an audience, the greater is the number of these invitations; and if he fails to respond, the more widespread is the dissatisfaction among his baulked constituents. He is expected to preside at the inaugural meetings of local amateur dramatic societies and local naturalists’ field clubs, and “to honour with his presence” the beanfeasts of local friendly societies. The literary institution, designed to keep young men of the constituency out of the public-houses, must be opened by him. He must attend entertainments of a mixed political and musical sort, at which his speech is sandwiched between a sentimental song and a comic.