Emperor (interrupting).  Nay, Sire, remember your birth and position!  It is a passing annoyance, but it should not move you.  Remember, you are a Hohenzollern!  Let me offer you a cigarette.

Kaiser (calming down).  Well, perhaps I had better be quiet.  It is more dignified.

King (helping himself to the Emperor’s cigarette-case).  Let me join you.

Kaiser.  But I say, what use is the Treaty to either of us?

Emperor (with a smile).  Properly treated, it is of service to us all. (Lights it, and offers it to his two partners).  It will serve as a spill for our cigarettes! [Scene closes in upon the Treaty ending in smoke.

* * * * *

WELL DONE, DEAR!

  We’ve levelled farms, we’ve planted trees,
    And many mighty men of means
  Have shot at deer, and, if you please,
    A DEAR has shot and won the Queen’s!

* * * * *

ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF TOBY, M.P.

House of Commons, Monday, July 20.—­“Man and boy I’ve sat in this House for seven years,” said WHITTAKER ELLIS, as he reposed behind Ministers diffusing a sense of aldermanic respectability over an appreciable area of space; “never have I seen Irish Estimates got through in this style.  LORD LIEUTENANT has his salary voted without a word of comment, and CHIEF SECRETARY will, I believe, get his in a couple of hours.  Have known the time when it wasn’t done in a couple of nights.”

[Illustration:  Aldermanic Respectability.]

Strange indeed the scene; not thirty Members present whilst the Woluminous WEBB goes all the way back to the Tipperary riots in search of text for dreary observations; then fearsome speeches by FLYNN and P.J.  POWER.  Some fillip to proceedings when JORDAN rolls in.

JORDAN is Member of Parliament for Clare, as he once or twice incidentally remarked.  Evidently much impressed by distinction.  House laughs at reiterated claim.  The billows of Jordan rise; had no personal objection to Prince ARTHUR, he said, but “as Member of Parliament for Clare” had to complain of him in his official capacity.  What had he done?  “He has given Clare such a resident Magistrate as CECIL ROCHE, a low tyrannical man, who ordered a low policeman to seize me—­me, Member of Parliament for Clare.”

JORDAN glared round on laughing House; quite incomprehensible what they should be guffawing at.  Marvel increased when he introduced Father GILLIKAN on the scene,

[Illustration:  “Member of Parliament for Clare.”]

“What had happened to Father GILLIKAN?” JORDAN roared, fixing a bloodshot eye on ASHMEAD-BARTLETT, who had just dropped in on Treasury Bench.  “Why, Father GILLIKAN had been sent to prison for a speech delivered in the middle of the River Shannon.”