* * * * *

    “Unionist Agent wanted ...  Liberal salary offered.”—­Times.

Just the job for a Coalitionist.

       * * * * *
    “One must, however, remember that the Turk—­and hurl upon
    him what execrations you may—­is still the [text upside down: 
    gentleman of the Near] East.”—­Weekly Paper.

He may be the “gentleman of the Near East,” but that has not saved him from being turned down.

* * * * *

The counter-order of the bath.

[A Standing Committee of the House of Commons has refused to vote L3,800 for a lift and a second bathroom in the proposed official residence of the Lord Chancellor within the precincts of the House of Lords.  In a letter to Sir Alfred MOND Lord Birkenhead wrote:  “I am sure both yourself and the Committee will understand that my object in writing is to make it plain that I never asked anyone to provide me with a residence, and that I am both able and willing, in a house of my own, to provide my family and myself with such bathroom and other accommodation as may be reasonably necessary.”]

  I did not ask for it; I never yearned
    Within the Royal Court to board and bed;
  Like all the other honours I have earned,
    I had this greatness thrust upon my head;
  But if the Precincts are to be my lair
    Then for my comfort Ministers must cater;
  I want a second bath inserted there,
          Also an elevator.

  Daily fatigued by those official cares
    Which my exalted dignity assumes,
  I could not ask my feet to climb the stairs
    Which link that mansion’s three-and-thirty rooms;
  And, if the Law must have so clean a fame
    That none can point to where a speck of dust is,
  A single bathroom cannot meet the claim
          Of equitable Justice.

  My wants are modest, you will please remark;
    I crave no vintage of the Champagne zone,
  No stalled chargers neighing for the Park,
    No 9.5 cigars (I have my own);
  I do not ask, who am the flower of thrift,
    For Orient-rugs or “Persian apparatus”;
  Nothing is lacking save a bath and lift
          To fill my soul’s hiatus.

  And, should my plea for reasonable perks
    (Barely four thousand pounds) be flatly quashed;
  Should kind Sir Alf, Commissioner of Works,
    Be forced to leave me liftless and half-washed;
  Then for these homely needs of which I speak,
    Content with my old pittance from the nation,
  In Grosvenor Square (or Berkeley) I will seek
          Private accommodation.

  O.S.

* * * * *

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