(To be continued.)

* * * * *

THE RIGHTS OF COUNSEL.

(BY A CLIENT.)

  Oh, what are the “rights” of the Q.C.? 
  The point of the question but few see. 
        Those rights are to do
        What suits him, if not you! 
  Faith! that’s the whole business in nuce!

* * * * *

JOKIN’S LATEST.—­“The Surplus will be anything but a dry subject this year, as it is owing to a steady or (probably) unsteady consumption of Drink!”

* * * * *

ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF TOBY, M.P.

House of Commons, Monday, March 23.—­Easter Holidays begin to-morrow; to-night last rally round RAIKES; Postmaster harried from both sides of House; the Contumacious COBB begins it; comments on Coroner’s conduct beginning to pall on accustomed appetite; references to delicate investigation in judicial circles falling flat; so turns upon POSTMASTER-GENERAL.  Wants to know about the Boy Messengers?  Pack in full cry; RAIKES pelted with newspapers, assailed with over-weighted letters; late at night CAMERON comes up quite fresh, desiring to “call attention to the position taken up by the POSTMASTER-GENERAL with regard to the Electric Call and Boy Messenger System,” just as if he had at the moment made the discovery.

[Illustration:  “Wonderful!”]

In course of lecture CAMERON produces sort of pocket-pistol; explains it’s the thing you work the electric call with.  You press a button here, and up comes a tumbler of milk and soda; another button, and you have a sausage and a hot potato; a third, and your boots are suddenly pulled off by an unseen agency; a fourth, and you find yourself seated in a hansom cab, with eighteenpence pressed into your hand to pay your fare withal; a fifth, and you’re awakened at four o’clock in the morning with an apology.  Something, you learn, went wrong with the machine, and it was the gentleman on the next floor who ought to have been called at this hour.

GANE, Q.C., with hands folded on knees, sat entranced, listening to this interesting narrative, and watching the illustrations rapidly produced by CAMERON, as he touched the various buttons.

“Wonderful!” cried GANE, Q.C.  “Never knew anything like it since I read Arabian Nights.”

“What’s RAIKES’ loss is our GANE,” says WILFRID LAWSON.

Must think this over during the Recess.

For awhile RAIKES had peace; quite forgotten whilst House, falling into GANE’s attitude, listened to CAMERON’s fairy tale.

[Illustration:  The Pillary Post.]