The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER announced the names of the Royal Commissioners who are to consider how the income-tax can be improved.  Several Members complained that there is only one woman among them, and that, pending their report (expected some time next year), the glaring anomaly by which husband and wife are regarded for taxable purposes as a single entity is apparently to be continued.  The idea of presenting Mr. CHAMBERLAIN with a box for The Purse Strings, in the hope that it would convert him, has unfortunately been frustrated by the withdrawal of the play.

Mr. BONAR LAW’S determination to leave the Cippenham question to the free judgment of the House led (as possibly he anticipated) to its expressing no judgment at all.  Sir DONALD MACLEAN and others served up a rather insipid rechauffe of Lord DESBOROUGH’S indictment, and Mr. CHURCHILL repeated Lord INVERFORTH’S defence, but put a little more ginger into it.  Incidentally he mentioned that a prolonged search for the nonagenarian pensioner had produced nobody more venerable than a comparative youngster of sixty-five.  Deprived of this prop the Opposition felt unequal to walking through the Lobbies.

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THE FAIRIES’ FLITTING.

  There’s a family of fairies lives inside our pigeon-cot,
    Down the garden, near the great big sumach-tree,
  Where the grass has grown across the path and dead leaves lie and rot
    And no one hardly ever goes but me;
  Yes, it’s just the place for fairies, and they told the pigeons so;
    They begged to be allowed to move in soon;
  It’s a most tremendous honour, as of course the pigeons know;
    It was all arranged this very afternoon.

  There’s a family of fairies lives inside our pigeon-cot—­
    Oh, the bustle and the sweeping there has been! 
  For the pigeons didn’t scrub their house (I think they all forgot),
    And the fairies like their home so scrup’lous clean;
  There are fairy dusters hanging from the sumach as you pass;
    Tiny drops are dripping still from overhead;
  Broken fairy-brooms are lying near the fir-tree on the grass,
    Though the fairies went an hour ago to bed.

  There’s a family of fairies lives inside our pigeon-cot,
    And there’s cooings round about our chimney-stack,
  For the pigeons are all sitting there and talking such a lot
    And there’s nothing Gard’ner does will drive them back;
  “Why, they’ll choke up those roof-gutters if they start this nesting fuss;
    They’ve got a house,” he says, “so I don’t see—­”
  No, he doesn’t know the secret, and there’s no one does but—­us,
    All the pigeons, and the fairy-folk and ME!

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[Illustration:  ENFIN SEULS!]

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WHAT EVERY MINISTER SHOULD KNOW.