 CHAPTER X The Captain's Story There was a good deal of pleasant gossip about old Captain Hurricane Jones of the Pacific Ocean, peace to his ashes. Two or three of us present had known him. I, particularly well, for I had made four sea voyages with him. He was a very remarkable man. He was born on a ship. He picked up what little education he had among his shipmates. He began life in the folksal and climbed, grade by grade, to the captaincy. More than fifty years of his sixty-five were spent at sea. He had sailed all oceans, seen all lands, and borrowed a tint from all climates. When a man has been fifty years at sea, he necessarily knows nothing of men, nothing of the world but its surface, nothing of the world's thought, nothing of the world's learning, but its ABC, and that blurred and distorted by the unfocused lenses of an untrained mind. Such a man is only a gray and bearded child. That is what old Hurricane Jones was, simply an innocent, lovable old infant. When his spirit was in repose, he was as sweet and gentle as a girl. When his wrath was up, he was a hurricane that made his nickname seem tamely descriptive. He was formidable in a fight, for he was of powerful build, and dauntless courage. He was frescoed from head to heel with pictures and mottos tattooed in red and blue India ink. I was with him one voyage when he got his last vacant space tattooed. This vacant space was around his left ankle. During three days he stumped about the ship with his ankle bare and swollen, and this legend gleaming red and angry out from a clouding of India ink. Virtue is its own capital R apostrophe D. There was lack of room. He was deeply and sincerely pious, and swore like a fishwoman. He considered swearing blameless because sailors would not understand an order unillumined by it. He was a profound biblical scholar, that is, he thought he was. He believed everything in the Bible, but he had his own methods of arriving at his beliefs. He was of the advanced school of thinkers and applied natural laws to the interpretation of all miracles, somewhat on the plan of the people who make the six days of creation, six geological epics, and so forth. Without being aware of it, he was a rather severe satire on modern scientific religionists. Such a man as I have been describing is rabidly fond of disquisition and argument. One knows that without being told it. One trip the captain had a clergyman on board, but did not know he was a clergyman since the passenger list did not betray the fact. He took a great liking to this Reverend Mr. Peters, and talked with him a great deal, told him yarns, gave him toothsome scraps of personal history, and wove a glittering streak of profanity through his garrulous fabric that was refreshing to a spirit weary of the dull neutralities of undecorated speech. One day the captain said, Peters, do you ever read the Bible? Well, yes. I judge it ain't often by the way you say it. Now, you tackle it in deadernest once, and you'll find it'll pay. Don't get discouraged, but hang right on. First, you won't understand it, but by and by things will begin to clear up, and then you wouldn't lay it down to eat. Yes, I have heard that said. And it's so, too. There ain't a book that begins with it. It lays over them all, Peters. There's some pretty tough things in it. There ain't any getting round that. But you stick to them, and think them out. And when once you get on the inside, everything's plain as day. The Miracles, too, Captain? Yes, sir. The Miracles, too. Every one of them. Now, there's that business with the prophets of Baal. Like enough that stumped you? Well, I don't know, but I'll own up now. It stumped you. Well, I don't wonder. You hadn't had any experience in ravelling such things out, and naturally it was too many for you. Would you like to have me explain that thing to you, and show you how to get at the meat of these matters? Indeed I would, Captain, if you don't mind. Then the Captain proceeded as follows. I'll do it with pleasure. First, you see, I read and read and thought and thought, till I got to understand what sort of people they were in the old Bible times. And then after that, it was clear and easy. Now, this was the way I put it up, concerning Isaac. This was the Captain's own mistake. And the prophets of Baal. There was some mighty, sharp man amongst the public characters of that old, ancient day, and Isaac was one of them. Isaac had his failings. Plenty of them, too. It ain't for me to apologize for Isaac. He played on the prophets of Baal, and, like enough, he was justifiable, considering the odds that was against him. No, all I say is, it wasn't any miracle, and that I'll show you so you can see it yourself. Well, times had been getting rougher and rougher for prophets. That is, prophets of Isaac's denomination. There were 450 prophets of Baal in the community, and only one Presbyterian. That is, if Isaac was a Presbyterian, which I reckon he was, but I don't say. Naturally the prophets of Baal took all the trade. Isaac was pretty low-spirited, I reckon, but he was a good deal of a man. No doubt he went to prophesying around, letting on to be doing a land office business, but it wasn't any use. He couldn't run any opposition to amount to anything. By and by things got desperate with him. He sets his head to work and thinks it all out, and then what does he do? Why, he begins to throw out hints that the other parties are this and that and other. Nothing very definite, maybe, but just kind of undermining their reputation in a quiet way. This made talk, of course, and finally got to the king. The king asked Isaac what he meant by his talk. He says, oh, nothing particular. Only can they pray down fire from heaven on an altar? It ain't much, maybe, Your Majesty. Only can they do it. That's the idea. So the king was a good deal disturbed, and he went to the prophets of Baal, and they said, pretty airy, that if he had an altar ready, they were ready, and they intimated he better get it insured too. So next morning all the children of Israel and their parents and the other people gathered themselves together. Well, here was that great crowd of prophets of Baal packed together on one side, and Isaac walking up and down all alone on the other, putting up his job. When time was called, Isaac let on to be comfortable and indifferent, told the other team to take the first innings. So they went at it, the whole four hundred and fifty praying around the altar, very hopeful, and doing their level best. They prayed an hour, two hours, three hours, and so on. Plumb till noon. It wasn't any use. They hadn't took a trick. Of course, they felt kind of ashamed before all those people, and while they might, now, what would a magnanimous man do? Keep still, wouldn't he? Of course. What did Isaac do? He graveled the prophets of Baal every way he could think of. Says he, You don't speak up loud enough. Your God's asleep like enough. Or maybe he's taking a walk. You want a holler, you know? Or words to that effect. I don't recollect the exact language. Mind, I don't apologize for Isaac. He had his faults. Well, the prophets of Baal prayed along the best they knew how, all the afternoon, and never raised a spark. At last, about sundown, they were all tuckered out, and they owned up and quit. What does Isaac do now? He steps up and says to some friends of his there, Pour four barrels of water on the altar. Everybody was astonished, for the other side had prayed at it dry, you know, and got whitewashed. They poured it on, says he, Heave on four more barrels. And he says, Heave on four more. Twelve barrels, you see, altogether. The water ran all over the altar, and all down the sides, and filled up a trench around it that would hold a couple of hog's heads. Measures, it says. I reckon it means about a hog's head. Some of the people were going to put on their things and go, for they allowed he was crazy. They didn't know Isaac. Isaac knelt down and began to pray. He strung along, and strung along about the heathen and distant lands, and about the sister churches, and about the state and the country at large, and about those that's in authority and government, and all the usual program, you know, till everybody had got tired and gone to thinking about something else. And then, all of a sudden, when nobody was noticing, he outs with a match and rakes it on the underside of his leg, and up the whole thing blazes like a house fire. Twelve barrels of water? Petroleum, sir. Petroleum, that's what it was. Petroleum, captain? Yes, sir. The country was full of it. Isaac knew all about that. You read the Bible. Don't you worry about the tough places. They ain't tough when you come to think them out, and throw light on them. There ain't a thing in the Bible, but what is true. All you want is to go prayerfully to work, and cipher out how it was done. End of Chapter 10 The Captain's Story, read by John Greenman. Here in Vienna, in these closing days of 1897, one's blood gets no chance to stagnate. The atmosphere is brimful of political electricity. All conversation is political. Every man is a battery, with brushes overworn, and gives out blue sparks when you set him going on the common topic. Everybody has an opinion, and lets you have it frank and hot, and out of this multitude of counsel you get merely confusion and despair. For no one really understands this political situation, or can tell you what is going to be the outcome of it. Things have happened here recently, which would set any country but Austria on fire from end to end, and upset the government to a certainty. But no one feels confident that such results will follow here. Here, apparently, one must wait and see what will happen. Then he will know, and not before. Guessing is idle. Guessing cannot help the matter. This is what the wise tell you. They all say it. They say it every day. And it is the sole detail upon which they all agree. There is some approach to agreement upon another point, that there will be no revolution. Men say, look at our history. Revolutions have not been in our line, and look at our political map. Its construction is unfavorable to an organized uprising, and without unity, what could a revolt accomplish? It is disunion, which has held our empire together for centuries. And what it has done in the past, it may continue to do now, and in the future. The most intelligible sketch I have encountered of this unintelligible arrangement of things was contributed to the Traveller's Record by Mr. Forrest Morgan of Hartford three years ago. He says, The Austro-Hungarian monarchy is the patchwork quilt, the midway plaissance, the national chain gang of Europe, a state that is not a nation but a collection of nations, some with national memories and aspirations, and others without. Some occupying distinct provinces, almost purely their own, and others mixed with alien races, but each with a different language, and each mostly holding the others foreigners, as much as if the link of a common government did not exist. Only one of its races even now comprises so much as one fourth of the whole, and not another so much as one sixth, and each has remained for ages as unchanged in isolation, however mingled together in locality, as globules of oil in water. There is nothing else in the modern world that is nearly like it, though there have been plenty in past ages. It seems unreal and impossible even though we know it is true. It violates all our feeling as to what a country should be in order to have a right to exist, and it seems as though it was too ramshackle to go on holding together any length of time. Yet it has survived, much in its present shape, two centuries of storms that have swept perfectly unified countries from existence, and others that have brought it to the verge of ruin, has survived formidable European coalitions to dismember it, and has steadily gained force after each, forever changing in its exact makeup, losing in the west but gaining in the east. The changes leave the structure as firm as ever, like the dropping off and adding on of logs in a raft, its mechanical union of pieces showing all the vitality of genuine national life. That seems to confirm and justify the prevalent Austrian faith that in this confusion of unrelated and irreconcilable elements, this condition of incurable disunion, there is strength for the government. Nearly every day someone explains to me that a revolution would not succeed here. It couldn't, you know. Broadly speaking, all the nations in the empire hate the government, but they all hate each other too, and with devoted and enthusiastic bitterness, no two of them can combine. The nation that rises must rise alone. Then the others would joyfully join the government against her, and she would have just a fly's chance against a combination of spiders. This government is entirely independent. It can go its own road, and do as it pleases. It has nothing to fear. In countries like England and America, where there is one tongue and the public interests are common, the government must take account of public opinion, but in Austria-Hungary there are nineteen public opinions, one for each state. No, two or three for each state, since there are two or three nationalities in each. A government cannot satisfy all these public opinions. It can only go through the motions of trying. This government does that. It goes through the motions, and they do not succeed, but that does not worry the government much. The next man will give you some further information. The government has a policy, a wise one, and sticks steadily to it. This policy is tranquility. Keep this hive of excitable nations as quiet as possible. Encourage them to amuse themselves with things less inflammatory than politics. To this end it furnishes them an abundance of Catholic priests, to teach them to be docile and obedient, and to be diligent in acquiring ignorance about things here below, and knowledge about the kingdom of heaven, to whose historic delights they are going to add the charm of their society by and by. And further, to this same end, it cools off the newspapers every morning at five o'clock whenever warm events are happening. There is a censor of the press, and apparently he is always on duty and hard at work. A copy of each morning paper is brought to him at five o'clock. His official wagons wait at the doors of the newspaper offices, and scud to him with the first copies that come from the press. His company of assistants read every line in these papers, and mark everything which seems to have a dangerous look. Then he passes final judgment upon these markings. Two things conspire to give to the results a capricious and unbalanced look. His assistants have diversified notions as to what is dangerous and what isn't. He can't get time to examine their criticisms in much detail. And so, sometimes the very same matter which is suppressed in one paper fails to be damned in another one, and gets published in full feather and unmodified. Then the paper in which it was suppressed blandly copies the forbidden matter into its evening edition, provokingly giving credit and detailing all the circumstances in courteous and inoffensive language, and of course the censor cannot say a word. Sometimes the censor sucks all the blood out of a newspaper and leaves it colorless and inane. Sometimes he leaves it undisturbed and lets it talk out its opinions with a frankness and vigor hardly to be surpassed, I think, in the journals of any country. Apparently the censor sometimes revises his verdicts upon second thought. For several times lately he has suppressed journals after their issue and partial distribution. The distributed copies are then sent for by the censor and destroyed. I have two of these, but at the time they were sent for I could not remember what I had done with them. If the censor did his work before the morning edition was printed he would be less of an inconvenience than he is. But of course the papers cannot wait many minutes after five o'clock to get his verdict. They might as well go out of business as do that. So they print and take the chances. Then if they get caught by a suppression they must strike out the condemned matter and print the edition over again. That delays the issue several hours and is expensive besides. The government gets the suppressed edition for nothing. If it bought it that would be joyful and would give great satisfaction. Also the edition would be larger. Some of the papers do not replace the condemned paragraphs with other matter. They merely snatch them out and leave blanks behind. Morning blanks marked confiscated. The government discourages the dissemination of newspaper information in other ways. For instance it does not allow newspapers to be sold on the streets. Therefore the news boy is unknown in Vienna. And there is a stamp duty of nearly a cent upon each copy of a newspaper's issue. Every American paper that reaches me has a stamp upon it, which has been pasted there in the post office or downstairs in the hotel office, but no matter who put it there I have to pay for it and that is the main thing. Sometimes friends send me so many papers that it takes all I can earn that week to keep this government going. I must take passing notice of another point in the government's measures for maintaining tranquility. Everybody says it does not like to see any individual attained to commanding influence in the country since such a man can become a disturber and an inconvenience. We have as much talent as the other nations, says the citizen, resignedly and without bitterness. But for the sake of the general good of the country we are discouraged from making it over-conspicuous, and not only discouraged, but tactfully and skillfully prevented from doing it if we show too much persistence. Consequently we have no renowned men. In centuries we have seldom produced one, that is seldom allowed one to produce himself. We can say today what no other nation of first importance in the family of Christian civilizations can say, that there exists no Austrian who has made an enduring name for himself, which is familiar all around the globe. Another helper toward tranquility is the army. It is as pervasive as the atmosphere. It is everywhere. All the mentioned creators, promoters and preservers of the public tranquility do their several shares in the quieting work. They make a restful and comfortable serenity and reposefulness. This is disturbed sometimes for a little while. A mob assembles to protest against something. It gets noisy, noisier, still noisier, finally too noisy. Then the persuasive soldiery come charging down upon it, and in a few minutes all is quiet again, and there is no mob. There is a constitution and there is a parliament. The House draws its membership of 425 deputies from the 19 or 20 states here to forementioned. These men represent peoples who speak 11 languages. That means 11 distinct varieties of jealousies, hostilities, and warring interests. This could be expected to furnish forth a parliament of a pretty inharmonious sort, and make legislation difficult at times. And it does that. The parliament is split up into many parties. The clericals, the progressists, the German nationalists, the young checks, the social democrats, the Christian socialists, and some others. And it is difficult to get up working combinations among them. They prefer to fight apart sometimes. The recent troubles have grown out of Count Badeni's necessities. He could not carry on his government without a majority vote in the House at his back, and in order to secure it, he had to make a trade of some sort. He made it with the Czechs, the Bohemians. The terms were not easy for him. He must pass a bill making the Czech tongue the official language in Bohemia in place of the German. This created a storm. All the Germans in Austria were incensed. In numbers they formed but a fourth part of the empire's population. But they urged that the country's public business should be conducted in one common tongue. And that tongue, a world language, which German is. However, Badeni secured his majority. The German element in parliament was apparently become helpless. The Czech deputies were exultant. Then the music began. Badeni's voyage, instead of being smooth, was disappointingly rough from the start. The government must get the Aus-Leich through. It must not fail. Badeni's majority was ready to carry it through. But the minority was determined to obstruct and delay it until the obnoxious Czech language measure should be shelved. The Aus-Leich is an adjustment, arrangement, settlement, which holds Austria and Hungary together. It dates from 1867 and has to be renewed every ten years. It establishes the share which Hungary must pay toward the expenses of the imperial government. Hungary is a kingdom. The Emperor of Austria is its king. And has its own parliament and governmental machinery. But it has no foreign office. And it has no army. At least its army is a part of the Imperial Army, is paid out of the Imperial Treasury, and is under the control of the Imperial War Office. The ten-year re-arrangement was due a year ago, but failed to connect, at least completely. A year's compromise was arranged. A new arrangement must be affected before the last day of this year. Otherwise the two countries become separate entities. The Emperor would still be king of Hungary, that is, king of an independent foreign country. There would be Hungarian custom houses on the Austrian frontier. And there would be a Hungarian army and a Hungarian foreign office. Both countries would be weakened by this. Both would suffer damage. The opposition in the house, although in the minority, had a good weapon to fight with in the pending Auschleich. If it could delay the Auschleich a few weeks, the government would doubtless have to withdraw the hated language bill or lose Hungary. The opposition began its fight. Its arms were the rules of the house. It was soon manifest that by applying these rules ingeniously, it could make the majority helpless and keep it so, as long as it pleased. It could shut off business every now and then, with a motion to adjourn. It could require the eyes and nose on the motion, and use up thirty minutes on that detail. It could call for the reading and verification of the minutes of the preceding meeting, and use up half a day in that way. It could require that several of its members be entered upon the list of permitted speakers previously to the opening of a sitting, and as there is no time limit, further delays could thus be accomplished. These were all lawful weapons, and the men of the opposition, technically called the left, were within their rights in using them. They used them to such dire purpose that all parliamentary business was paralyzed. The right, the government side, could accomplish nothing. Then it had a saving idea. This idea was a curious one. It was to have the President and the Vice Presidents of the Parliament trample the rules underfoot upon occasion. This, for a profoundly embittered minority constructed out of fire and gun-cotton. It was time for idle strangers to go and ask leave to look down out of a gallery, and see what would be the result of it. End of Stirring Times in Austria Part 1 The Government in the Frying Pan Read by John Greenman Section 14 of How to Tell a Story and Other Essays by Mark Twain This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. How to Tell a Story and Other Essays by Mark Twain Chapter 11 Stirring Times in Austria Part 2 A Memorable Sitting And now took place that memorable sitting of the house which broke two records. It lasted the best part of two days and a night, surpassing by half an hour the longest sitting known to the world's previous parliamentary history, and breaking the long speech record with Dr. Lecker's 12-hour effort, the longest flow of unbroken talk that ever came out of one mouth since the world began. At 8.45 on the evening of the 28th of October, when the house had been sitting a few minutes short of 10 hours, Dr. Lecker was granted the floor. It was a good place for theatrical effects. I think that no other Senate house is so shapely as this one, or so richly and showily decorated. Its plan is that of an opera house. Up toward the straight side of it, the stage side, rise a couple of terraces of desks for the ministry and the official clerks or secretaries, terraces 30 feet long, and each supporting about half a dozen desks with spaces between them. Above these is the President's terrace against the wall. Along it are distributed the proper accommodations for the presiding officer and his assistants. The wall is of richly colored marble, highly polished. Its paneled sweep, relieved by fluted columns and pilasters of distinguished grace and dignity, which glow softly and frostily in the electric light. Around the spacious half-circle of the floor bends the great two-storied curve of the boxes, its frontage elaborately ornamented and sumptuously gilded. On the floor of the house the 425 desks radiate fan-wise from the President's Tribune. The galleries are crowded on this particular evening, for word has gone about that the house-glyke is before the house, that the President, Ritter von Abrahamovitz, has been throttling the rules, that the opposition are in an inflammable state in consequence, and that the night session is likely to be of an exciting sort. The gallery guests are fashionably dressed, and the finery of the women makes a bright and pretty show under the strong electric light. But down on the floor there is no costumery. The deputies are dressed in day clothes. Some of the clothes neat and trim, others not. There may be three members in evening dress, but not more. There are several Catholic priests in their long black gowns, and with crucifixes hanging from their necks. No member wears his hat. One may see by these details that the aspects are not those of an evening sitting of an English House of Commons, but rather those of a sitting of our House of Representatives. In his high place sits the President, Abrahamovitz, object of the opposition's limitless hatred. He is sunk back in the depths of his armchair, and has his chin down. He brings the ends of his spread fingers together in front of his breast, and reflectively taps them together with the air of one who would like to begin business, but must wait, and be as patient as he can. It makes you think of Richardieux. Now and then he swings his head up to the left or to the right, and answers something which someone has bent down to say to him. Then he taps his fingers again. He looks tired, and may be a trifle harassed. He is a gray-haired, long, slender man, with a colorless long face, which, in repose, suggests a death-mask. But when not in repose is tossed and rippled by a turbulent smile which washes this way and that, and is not easy to keep up with, a pious smile, a holy smile, a saintly smile, a deprecating smile, a beseeching and supplicating smile. And when it is at work the large mouth opens, and the flexible lips crumple and unfold, and crumple again, and move around in a genial and persuasive and angelic way, and expose large glimpses of the teeth. And that interrupts the sacredness of the smile, and gives it momentarily a mixed worldly and political and satanic cast. It is a most interesting face to watch. And then, the long hands and the body, they furnish great and frequent help to the face in the business of adding to the force of the statesman's words. To change the tense. At the time of which I have just been speaking, the crowds in the galleries were gazing at the stage and the pit with wrapped interest and expectancy. One half of the great fan of desks was in effect empty, vacant. In the other half, several hundred members were bunched and jammed together as solidly as the bristles in a brush, and they also were waiting and expecting. Presently the chair delivered this utterance. Dr. Lesher has the floor. Then burst out such another wild and frantic and deafening clamour, as has not been heard on this planet since the last time the Comanches surprised a white settlement at midnight. Yells from the left, counter-yells from the right, explosions of yells from all sides at once, and all the air soared and pawed and clawed and cloven by a writhing confusion of gesturing arms and hands. Out of the midst of this thunder and turmoil and tempest rose Dr. Lesher, serene and collected, and the providential length of him enabled his head to show out above it. He began his twelve-hour speech. At any rate his lips could be seen to move, and that was evidence. On high sat the President imploring order, with his long hands put together as in prayer, and his lips visibly but not hearably speaking. At intervals he grasped his bell and swung it up and down with vigor, adding its keen clamour to the storm, waltering there below. Dr. Lesher went on with his pantomime speech, contented, untroubled. Here and there, and now and then, powerful voices burst above the din and delivered an ejaculation that was heard. Then the din ceased for a moment or two, and gave opportunity to hear what the chair might answer. Then the noise broke out again. Apparently the President was being charged with all sorts of illegal exercises of power in the interest of the right, the government side, among these with arbitrarily closing an order of business before it was finished, with an unfair distribution of the right to the floor, with refusal of the floor upon quibble and protest to members entitled to it, with stopping a speaker's speech upon quibble and protest, and with other transgressions of the rules of the house. One of the interrupters, who made himself heard, was a young fellow of slight build and neat dress, who stood a little apart from the solid crowd, and leaned negligently with folded arms and feet crossed against a desk. Trim and handsome, strong face and thin features, black hair roughed up, parsimonious mustache, resonant great voice of good tone and pitch. It is wolf, capable and hospitable with sword and pistol, fighter of the recent duel with Count Badeni, the head of the government. He shot Badeni through the arm, and then walked over in the politest way, and inspected his game, shook hands, expressed regret, and all that. Out of him came early this thundering peel, audible above the storm. I demand the floor! I wish to offer a motion. In the sudden lull which followed, the President answered, Dr. Lecher has the floor. Wolf, I move the clothes of the sitting. P. Representative Lecher has the floor. Stormy outburst from the left, that is, the opposition. Wolf, I demand the floor for the introduction of a formal motion. Pause. Mr. President, are you going to grant it or not? Crash of approval from the left. I will keep on demanding the floor till I get it. P. I call Representative Wolf to order. Dr. Lecher has the floor. Wolf, Mr. President, are you going to observe the rules of this house? Tempest of applause and confused ejaculations from the left, a boom and roar which long endured and stopped all business for the time being. Dr. von Pestler, by the rules motions are in order and the chair must put them to vote. For answer the President, who is a pole, I make this remark in passing, began to jangle his bell with energy at the moment that that wild pandemonium of voices burst out again. Wolf, hearable above the storm, Mr. President, I demand the floor. We intend to find out, here and now, which is the hardest, a pole's skull or a German's. This brought out a perfect cyclone of satisfaction from the left. In the midst of it someone again moved in adjournment. The President blandly answered that Dr. Lecher had the floor, which was true, and he was speaking to, calmly, earnestly, and argumentatively, and the official stenographers had left their places and were at his elbows taking down his words, he leaning and orating into their ears, a most curious and interesting scene. Dr. von Pestler, to the chair, do not drive us to extremities. The tempest burst out again, yells of approval from the left, cat-calls and ironical laughter from the right. At this point a new and most effective noisemaker was pressed into service. Each desk has an extension consisting of a removable board, 18 inches long, six wide, and a half inch thick. A member pulled one of these out and began to belabor the top of his desk with it. Instantly other members followed suit, and perhaps you can imagine the result. Of all conceivable rackets it is the most ear-splitting, intolerable, and altogether fiendish. The persecuted president leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, clasped his hands in his lap, and a look of pathetic resignation crept over his long face. It is the way a country schoolmaster used to look in days long past when he had refused his school a holiday, and it had risen against him in ill-mannered riot and violence and insurrection. Twice a motion to adjourn had been offered, a motion always in order in other houses, and doubtless so in this one also. The president had refused to put these motions. By consequence he was not in a pleasant place now, and was having a right hard time. Votes upon motions, whether carried or defeated, could make endless delay, and postpone the Auschleich to next century. In the midst of these sorrowful circumstances, and this hurricane of yells and screams, and satanic clatter of desk boards, Representative Dr. Cronoveter unfeelingly reminds the chair that a motion has been offered, and adds, say, yes or no, what do you sit there for, and give no answer? P. After I have given a speaker the floor, I cannot give it to another. After Dr. Lecker is through, I will put your motion. Storm of indignation from the left. Wolf to the chair. Thunder and lightning, look at the rule governing the case. Cronoveter, I move the clothes of the sitting, and I demand the eyes and nose. Dr. Lecker, Mr. President, have I the floor? P. You have the floor. Wolf to the chair, in a stentorian voice which cleaves its way through the storm. It is by such brutalities as these that you drive us to extremities. Are you waiting till someone shall throw into your face the word that shall describe what you are bringing about? That is, revolution. Tempest of insulted fury from the right. Is that what you are waiting for, old gray head? Long continued clatter of desk boards from the left with shouts of the vote, the vote! An ironical shout from the right. Wolf is boss! Wolf keeps on demanding the floor for his motion. At length, P. I call Representative Wolf to order. Your conduct is unheard of, sir. You forget that you are in a parliament. You must remember where you are, sir. Applauds from the right. Dr. Lecker is still peaceably speaking, the stenographers listening at his lips. Wolf, banging on his desk with his desk board, I demand the floor for my motion. I won't stand this trampling of the rules under foot. No, not if I die for it. I will never yield. You have got to stop me by force. Have I the floor? P. Representative Wolf, what kind of behavior is this? I call you to order again. You should have some regard for your dignity. Dr. Lecker speaks on. Wolf turns upon him with an offensive innuendo. Dr. Lecker, Mr. Wolf, I beg you to refrain from that sort of suggestions. Storm of hand clapping from the right. This was applause from the enemy, for Lecker himself, like Wolf, was an obstructionist. Wolf growls to Lecker. You can scribble that applause in your album. P. Once more, I call Representative Wolf to order. Do not forget that you are a representative, sir. Wolf, slam-banging with his desk board, I will force this matter. Are you going to grant me the floor or not? And still the sergeant at arms did not appear. It was because there wasn't any. It is a curious thing, but the chair has no effectual means of compelling order. After some more interruptions, Wolf, banging with his board, I demand the floor. I will not yield. P. I have no recourse against Representative Wolf. In the presence of behavior like this, it is to be regretted that such is the case. A shout from the right. Throw him out! It is true he had no effective recourse. He had an official called an Ordner, whose help he could invoke in desperate cases, but apparently the Ordner is only a persuader, not a compeler. Apparently he is a sergeant at arms, who is not loaded. A good enough gun to look at, but not valuable for business. For another twenty or thirty minutes, Wolf went on banging with his board and demanding his rights. Then at last the weary President threatened to summon the dread order-maker. But both his manner and his words were reluctant. Evidently it grieved him to have to resort to this dire extremity. He said to Wolf, If this goes on, I shall feel obliged to summon the Ordner and beg him to restore order in the house. Wolf, I'd like to see you do it. Suppose you fetch in a few policemen too. Great tumult. Are you going to put my motion to adjourn or not? Dr. Lecher continues his speech. Wolf accompanies him with his board-clatter. The President dispatches the Ordner, Dr. Lang, himself a deputy, on his order-restoring mission. Wolf, with his board uplifted for defense, confronts the Ordner with a remark which Boss Tweed might have translated into, Now let's see what you are going to do about it! Noise and tumult all over the house. Wolf stands upon his rights and says he will maintain them till he is killed in his tracks. Then he resumes his banging. The President jangles his bell and begs for order, and the rest of the house augments the racket the best it can. Wolf, I require an adjournment, because I find myself personally threatened. Laughter from the right. Not that I fear for myself. I am only anxious about what will happen to the man who touches me. The Ordner, I am not going to fight with you. Nothing came of the efforts of the Angel of Peace, and he presently melted out of the scene and disappeared. Wolf went on with his noise and with his demands that he be granted the floor, resting his board at intervals to discharge criticisms and epithets at the Chair. Once he reminded the Chairman of his violated promise to grant him Wolf the Floor, and said, Whence I came we call Promise Breakers Rascals! And he advised the Chairman to take his conscience to bed with him and use it as a pillow. Another time he said that the Chair was making itself ridiculous before all Europe. In fact some of Wolf's language was almost unparliamentary. By and by he struck the idea of beating out a tune with his board. Later he decided to stop asking for the floor and to confer it upon itself. And so he and Dr. Lecher now spoke at the same time and mingled their speeches with the other noises, and nobody heard either of them. Wolf rested himself now and then from speech making by reading in his clarion voice from a pamphlet. I will explain that Dr. Lecher was not making a 12 hour speech for past time, but for an important purpose. It was the government's intention to push the Auschleich through its preliminary stages in this one sitting, for which it was the order of the day, and then by vote refer it to a select committee. It was the majority's scheme, as charged by the opposition, to drown debate upon the bill by pure noise, drown it out, and stop it. The debate being thus ended the voice upon the reference would follow with victory for the government. But into the government's calculations had not entered the possibility of a single barreled speech, which should occupy the entire time limit of the sitting, and also get itself delivered in spite of all the noise. Goliath was not expecting David, but David was there, and during twelve hours he tranquilly pulled statistical, historical, and argumentative pebbles out of his script, and slung them at the giant. And when he was done he was victor, and the day was saved. In the English house an obstructionist has held the floor with Bible readings and other outside matters. But Dr. Lecher could not have that restful and recuperative privilege. He must confine himself strictly to the subject before the house. More than once, when the President could not hear him because of the general tumult, he sent persons to listen and report as to whether the orator was speaking to the subject or not. The subject was a peculiarly difficult one, and it would have troubled any other deputy to stick to it three hours without exhausting his ammunition, because it required a vast and intimate knowledge, detailed and particularised knowledge of the commercial, railroading, financial, and international banking relations existing between two great sovereignties, Hungary and the Empire. But Dr. Lecher is president of the board of trade of his city of Bryn, and was master of the situation. His speech was not formally prepared. He had a few notes jotted down for his guidance. He had his facts in his head. His heart was in his work. And for twelve hours he stood there, undisturbed by the clamour around him, and with grace and ease and confidence, poured out the riches of his mind in closely-reasoned arguments, closed in eloquent and faultless phrasing. He is a young man of thirty-seven. He is tall and well proportioned, and has cultivated and fortified his muscle by mountain climbing. If he were a little handsomer, he would sufficiently reproduce for me the chauncey depew of the great New England dinner-nights of some years ago. He has depew's charm of manner and graces of language and delivery. There was but one way for Dr. Lecher to hold the floor. He must stay on his legs. If he should sit down to rest a moment, the floor would be taken from him by the enemy in the chair. When he had been talking three or four hours, he himself proposed an adjournment, in order that he might get some rest from his wearing labours. But he limited his motion with the condition that, if it was lost, he should be allowed to continue his speech, and if it carried, he should have the floor at the next sitting. Wolf was now appeased, and withdrew his own thousand times offered motion, and Dr. Lecher's was voted upon and lost, so he went on speaking. By one o'clock in the morning, excitement and noise-making had tired out nearly everybody, but the orator. Gradually the seats of the right underwent depopulation. The occupants had slipped out to the refreshment rooms to eat and drink, or to the corridors to chat. Someone remarked that there was no longer a quorum present, and moved a call of the house. The chair, Vice President Dr. Cremars, refused to put it to vote. There was a small dispute over the legality of this ruling, but the chair held its ground. The Left remained on the battlefield to support their champion. He went steadily on with his speech, and all was it was strong, virile, felicitous, and to the point. He was earning applause, and this enabled his party to turn that fact to account. Now and then they applauded him a couple of minutes on a stretch, and during that time he could stop speaking and rest his voice without having the floor taken from him. At a quarter to two a member of the Left demanded that Dr. Lecher be allowed a recess for rest, and said that the chairman was heartless. Dr. Lecher himself asked for ten minutes. The chair allowed him five. Before the time had run out Dr. Lecher was on his feet again. Wolf burst out again with a motion to adjourn, refused by the chair. Wolf said the whole parliament wasn't worth a pinch of powder. The chair retorted that that was true in a case where a single member was able to make all parliamentary business impossible. Dr. Lecher continued his speech. The members of the majority went out by detachments from time to time, and took naps upon sofas in the reception rooms, and also refreshed themselves with food and drink, in quantities nearly unbelievable, but the minority stayed loyally by their champion. Some distinguished deputies of the majority stayed by him too, compelled there too by admiration of his great performance. When a man has been speaking eight hours, is it conceivable that he can still be interesting, still fascinating? When Dr. Lecher had been speaking eight hours he was still compactly surrounded by friends who would not leave him and by foes of all parties who could not, and all hung enchanted and wondering upon his words, and all testified their admiration with constant and cordial outbursts of applause. Surely this was a triumph without precedent in history. During the twelve-hour effort friends brought to the orator three glasses of wine, four cups of coffee, and one glass of beer, a most stingy reinforcement of his wasting tissues, but the hostile chair would permit no addition to it. But no matter, the chair could not beat that man. He was a garrison holding a fort, and was not to be starved out. When he had been speaking eight hours his pulse was seventy-two. When he had spoken twelve it was one hundred. He finished his long speech in these terms, as nearly as a permissively free translation can convey them. I will now hasten to close my examination of the subject. I conceive that we of the left have made it clear to the honorable gentleman of the other side of the house that we are stirred by no intemperate enthusiasm for this measure in its present shape. What we require and shall fight for with all lawful weapons is a formal, comprehensive, and definitive solution and settlement of these vexed matters. We desire the restoration of the earlier condition of things, the cancellation of all this incapable government's pernicious trades with Hungary, and then release from the sorry burden of the Badeni ministry. I voice the hope. I know not if it will be fulfilled. I voice the deep and sincere and patriotic hope that the committee into whose hands this bill will eventually be committed will take its stand upon high ground, and will return the Auschleich Provisiarum to this house in a form which shall make it the protector and promoter alike of the great interests involved and of the honour of our Fatherland. After a pause, turning toward the government benches, but in any case, gentlemen of the majority, make sure of this, henceforth as before, you will find us at our post. The Germans of Austria will neither surrender nor die. Then burst a storm of applause which rose and fell, rose and fell, burst out again and again and again, explosion after explosion, hurricane after hurricane, with no apparent promise of ever coming to an end. And, meantime, the whole left was surging and weltering about the champion, all bent upon ringing his hand and congratulating him and glorifying him. Finally he got away, and went home, in eight five loaves and twelve baskets of fishes, read the morning papers, slept three hours, took a short drive, then returned to the house and sat out the rest of the thirty-three hour session. To merely stand up in one spot twelve hours on a stretch is a feat which very few men could achieve. To add to that task the utterance of a hundred thousand words would be beyond the possibilities of the most of those few. To superimpose the requirement that the words should be put into the form of a compact, coherent, and symmetrical oration would probably rule out the rest of the few, bar, Dr. Lecher. In consequence of Dr. Lecher's twelve-hour speech and the other obstructions furnished by the minority, the famous thirty-three hour sitting of the house accomplished nothing. The government side had made a supreme effort assisting itself with all the helps at hand, both lawful and unlawful, yet had failed to get the ausc like into the hands of a committee. This was a severe defeat. The right was mortified, the left jubilant. Parliament was adjourned for a week to let the members cool off, perhaps, a sacrifice of precious time, for but two months remained in which to carry the all important ausc like to a consummation. If I have reported the behaviour of the house intelligibly, the reader has been surprised at it, and has wondered once these lawmakers come and what they are made of, and he has probably supposed that the conduct exhibited at the long sitting was far out of the common, and due to special excitement and irritation. As to the make-up of the house, it is this. The deputies come from all the walks of life, and from all the grades of society. There are princes, counts, barons, priests, peasants, mechanics, laborers, lawyers, judges, physicians, professors, merchants, bankers, shopkeepers. They are religious men, they are earnest, sincere, devoted, and they hate the Jews. The title of doctor is so common in the house that one may almost say that the deputy who does not bear it is by that reason conspicuous. I am assured that it is not a self-granted title, and not an honorary one, but an earned one, that in Austria it is very seldom conferred as a mere compliment, that in Austria the degrees of doctor of music, doctor of philosophy, and so on, are not conferred by the seats of learning, and so when an Austrian is called doctor it means that he is either a lawyer or a physician, and that he is not a self-educated man, but is college-bred, and has been diplomed for merit. That answers the question of the constitution of the house. Now as to the house's curious manners, the manners exhibited by this convention of doctors were not at that time being tried as a wholly new experiment. I will go back to a previous sitting in order to show that the deputies had already had some practice. There had been an incident. The dignity of the house had been wounded by improprieties indulged in, in its presence, by a couple of the members. This matter was placed in the hands of a committee to determine where the guilt lay, and the degree of it, and also to suggest the punishment. The chairman of the committee brought in his report. By this it appeared that in the course of a speech Deputy Schrammel said that religion had no proper place in the public schools. It was a private matter, whereupon Deputy Grigorig shouted, How about free love? To this Deputy Iroh flung out this retort, soda water at the Wimberger. This appeared to deeply offend Deputy Grigorig, who shouted back at Iroh, You cowardly blather-skite, say that again. The committee had sat three hours. Grigorig had apologized. Iroh had explained. Iroh explained that he didn't say anything about soda water at Wimberger. He explained in writing, and was very explicit, I declare upon my word of honour that I did not say the words attributed to me. Unhappily for his word of honour it was proved by the official stenographers, and by the testimony of several deputies that he did say them. The committee did not officially know why the apparently inconsequential reference to soda water at the Wimberger should move Deputy Grigorig to call the utterer of it a cowardly blather-skite. Still, after proper deliberation, it was of the opinion that the house ought to formally censure the whole business. This verdict seems to have been regarded as sharply severe. I think so, because Deputy Dr. Luger, Burgermeister of Vienna, felt it a duty to soften the blow to his friend Grigorig by showing that the soda water remark was not so innocuous as it might look. That indeed Grigorig's tough retort was justifiable, and he proceeded to explain why. He read a number of scandalous postcards, which he intimated had proceeded from Iroh, as indicated by the handwriting, though they were anonymous. Some of them were posted to Grigorig at his place of business, and could have been read by all his subordinates. The others were posted to Grigorig's wife. Luger did not say, but everybody knew that the cards referred to a matter of town gossip, which made Mr. Grigorig a chief actor in a tavern scene where siphon squirting played a prominent and humorous part, and wherein women had a share. There were several of the cards, more than several, in fact. No fewer than five were sent in one day. Dr. Luger read some of them and described others. Some of them had pictures on them. One a picture of a hog with a monstrous snout, and beside it a squirting soda siphon. Below it some sarcastic dodderl. Grigorig deals in shirts, cravats, etc. One of the cards bore these words. Much respected deputy and collared sower, or stealer. Another. Hurrah for the Christian social work among the women assemblages. Hurrah for the soda squirter. Comment by Dr. Luger. I cannot venture to read the rest of that one, nor the signature either. Another. Would you mind telling me if, comment by Dr. Luger, the rest of it is not properly readable. To deputy Grigorig's wife. Much respected Madame Grigorig. The undersigned desires an invitation to the next soda squirt. Comment by Dr. Luger. Neither the rest of the card nor the signature can I venture to read to the house, so vulgar are they. The purpose of this card, to expose Grigorig to his family, was repeated in others of these anonymous misives. The house, by vote, censured the two improper deputies. This may have had a modifying effect upon the phraseology of the membership for a while, and upon its general exuberance also, but it was not for long. As has been seen, it had become lively once more on the night of the long sitting. At the next sitting, after the long one, there was certainly no lack of liveliness. The President was persistently ignoring the rules of the house in the interest of the government side, and the minority were in an unappeasable fury about it. The ceaseless din and uproar, the shouting and stamping and desk-banging were deafening, but through it all burst voices now and then that made themselves heard. Some of the remarks were of a very candid sort, and I believe that if they had been uttered in our house of representatives, they would have attracted attention. I will insert some samples here, not in their order, but selected on their merits. Dr. Mayredder, to the President, You have lied! You conceded the floor to me! Make it good, or you have lied! Mr. Glockner, to the President, Leave! Get out! Wolf, indicating the President, There sits a man to whom a certain title belongs. Unto Wolf, who is continuously reading in a powerful voice from a newspaper, arrive these personal remarks from the majority. Oh, shut your mouth! Put him out! Out with him! Wolf stops reading a moment to shout at Dr. Luger, who has the floor, but cannot get a hearing. Please, betrayer of the people, begin! Dr. Luger, Minor Heron, a whole and groans Wolf, That's the holy light of the Christian Socialists. Mr. Kletsenbauer, Christian Socialist, Damn nation! Are you ever going to quiet down? Wolf discharges a galling remark at Mr. Wolmeyer, responding, You Jew, you! There is a moment's lull, and Dr. Luger begins his speech. Graceful, handsome man, with winning manners and attractive bearing, a bright and easy speaker, and is said to know how to trim his political sales to catch any favouring wind that blows. He manages to say a few words. Then the tempest overwhelms him again. Wolf stops reading his paper a moment to say a drastic thing about Luger, and his Christian Social Pieties, which sets the C.S.'s in a sort of frenzy. Mr. Wielklowek, You leave the Christian Socialists alone, you word of honour-breaker! Obstruct all you want to, but you leave them alone. You've no business in this house, you belong in a gin mill. Mr. Prochaska, In a lunas-tick asylum, you mean? Wielklowek, It's a pity that such a man should be leader of the Germans. He disgraces the German name. Dr. Schiker, It's a shame that the like of him should insult us. Srobak, to Wolf. Contemptable cub, we will bounce thee out of this. It is inferrable that the thee is not intended to indicate affection this time, but to reinforce and emphasise Mr. Strobak's scorn. Dr. Schiker, His insults are of no consequence. He wants his ears boxed. Dr. Leuger, to Wolf, You'd better worry a trifle over your Iroh's word of honour. You are behaving like a street Arab. Dr. Schiker, It's infamous. Dr. Leuger, And these shameless creatures are the leaders of the German People's Party. In the meantime, Wolf goes whooping along with his newspaper reading in great contentment. Dr. Patai, Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! You haven't the floor. Strobak, the miserable cub. Dr. Leuger, to Wolf, raising his voice strenuously above the storm. You are a wholly honourless street brat. A voice. Fire the rapscallion out! But Wolf's soul goes marching noisily on just the same. Schönerer, vast and muscular and endowed with the most powerful voice in the Reichach, comes plowing down through the standing crowds, red and choking with anger. Haltz before Deputy Wolbeier grabs a rule and smashes it with a blow upon a desk, threatens Wolbeier's face with his fist, and bellows out some personalities and a promise. Only you wait, we'll teach you. A whirlwind of offensive retorts assails him from the band of meek and humble Christian socialists compacted around their leader that distinguished religious expert, Dr. Leuger, Bergermeister of Vienna. Our breath comes in excited gas now, and we are full of hope. We imagine that we are back fifty years ago in the Arkansas legislature, and we think we know what is going to happen. And are glad we came, and glad we are up in the gallery, out of the way, where we can see the whole thing and yet not have to supply any of the material for the inquest. However, as it turns out, our confidence is abused, our hopes are misplaced. Dr. Patai, wildly excited, you quiet down, or we shall turn ourselves loose, there will be a cuffing of ears. Prochaska, in a fury, no, not earboxing, but genuine blows, if you allow it. I would rather take my hat off to a Jew than to Wolf, Strobach to Wolf. Jew flunky, here we have been fighting the Jews for ten years, and now you are helping them to power again. How much do you get for it? Holanski, what he wants is a straight jacket. Wolf continues his readings. It is a market report now. Remark, flung across the house to Schönerer. It will be judicious not to translate that. Its flavor is pretty high, in any case, but it becomes particularly gamey when you remember that the first gallery was well stocked with ladies. Apparently it was a great hit. It fetched thunders of joyous enthusiasm out of the Christian socialists, and in their rapture they flung biting epithets with wasteful liberality, at especially detested members of the opposition. Among others, this one at Schönerer. Then they added these words which they whooped, howled, and also even sang, in a deep voiced chorus, Schmel Liebkorn, Schmel Liebkorn, Schmel Liebkorn, and made it splendidly audible above the banging of desk boards and the rest of the roaring cyclone of fiendish noises. A gallery witticism comes flitting by from mouth to mouth around the great curve, the swan song of Austrian representative government. You can note its progress by the applause of smiles and nods it gets as it skims along. Kletzenbauer, holo furnace, where is Judith? Storm of laughter. Grigorig, the shirt merchant, this wolf theatre is costing six thousand florins. Wolf, with sweetness, notice him, gentlemen, it is Mr. Grigorig. Laughter. Vielle reweck to wolf. You, Judith! Schneider, brother knight, chorus of voices, East German awful tub! And so the war of epithets crashes along with never diminishing energy for a couple of hours. The ladies in the gallery were learning. That was well, for by and by ladies will form a part of the membership of all legislatures in the world as soon as they can prove competency they will be admitted. At present men only are competent to legislate, therefore they look down upon women and would feel degraded if they had to have them for colleagues in their high calling. Wolf is yelling another market report now. Guestman, shut up, infamous Lausbrat! During a momentary lull Dr. Luger gets a hearing for three sentences of his speech. They demand and require that the President shall suppress the four noisiest members of the opposition. Wolf, with a that-settles-it toss of the head, the shifty trickster of Vienna has spoken. Hero belong to Schenner's party. The word of honor incident has given it a new name. Gregorig is a Christian socialist and hero of the postcards and the Wimberger soda squirting incident. He stands vast and conspicuous and conceited and self-satisfied and roosterish and inconsequential at Luger's elbow, and is proud and cocky to be in such great company. He looks very well indeed, really majestic, and aware of it. He crows out his little empty remark now and then, and looks as pleased as if he had been delivered of the Ausgleich. Indeed he does look notably fine. He wears almost the only dress vest on the floor. It exposes a continental spread of white shirt front. His hands are posed at ease in the lips of his trousers' pockets. His head is tilted back complacently. He is attitudinizing. He is playing to the gallery. However, they are all doing that. It is curious to see. Men who only vote, and can't make speeches, and don't know how to invent witty ejaculations, wander about the vacated parts of the floor, and stop in a good place, and strike attitudes—attitudes suggestive of weighty thought, mostly—and glance furtively up at the galleries to see how it works. Or a couple will come together and shake hands in an artificial way, and laugh a gay, manufactured laugh, and do some constrained and self-conscious attitudinizing. And they steal glances at the galleries to see if they are getting notice. It is like a scene on the stage, by play by minor actors at the back, while the stars do the great work at the front. Even Count Badeni attitudinizes for a moment, strikes a reflective, Napoleonic attitude of fine picturesqueness, but soon thinks better of it, and desists. There are two who do not attitudinize. Poor, harried, and insulted President Abraminovich, who seems wholly miserable, and can find no way to put in the dreary time but by swinging his bell, and by discharging occasional remarks, which nobody can hear. And a resigned and patient priest, who sits lonely in a great vacancy on majority territory, and munches an apple. Schönerer uplifts his foghorn of a voice, and shakes the roof with an insult discharged at the majority. Dr. Lager, the Honourless Party would better keep still here. Gregoreg, the Echo, swelling out his shirt front. Yes, keep quiet, pimp! Schönerer to Lager. Political mount-bank. Porchaska to Schönerer. Drunken clown! During the final hour of the sitting, many happy phrases were distributed through the proceedings. Among them were these, and they are strikingly good ones. Blatherskite. Blackguard. Scoundrel. Brothel Daddy. This last was the contribution of Dr. Gessman, and gave great satisfaction, and deservedly. It seems to me that it was one of the most sparkling things that was said during the whole evening. At half-past two in the morning the house adjourned. The victory was with the opposition. No, not quite that. The effective part of it was snatched away from them by an unlawful exercise of presidential force. Another contribution toward driving the mistreated minority out of their minds. At other sittings of the Parliament, gentlemen of the opposition, shaking their fists toward the President, addressed him as Polish dog. At one sitting an angry deputy turned upon a colleague and shouted, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank. You must try to imagine what it was. If I should offer it even in the original it would probably not get by the magazine editor's blue pencil. To offer a translation would be to waste my ink, of course. This remark was frankly printed in its entirety by one of the Vienna dailies, but the others disguised the toughest half of it with stars. If the reader will go back over this chapter and gather its array of extraordinary epithets into a bunch and examine them he will marvel at two things. How this convention of gentlemen could consent to use such gross terms and why the users were allowed to get out of the place alive. There is no way to understand this strange situation. If every man in the house were a professional black guard and had his home in a sailor boarding-house one could still not understand it. For although that sort do use such terms they never take them. These men are not professional black guards. They are mainly gentlemen and educated. Yet they use the terms and take them too. They really seem to attach no consequence to them. One cannot say that they act like schoolboys, for that is only almost true, not entirely. Schoolboys black guard each other fiercely and by the hour, and one would think that nothing would ever come of it but noise. But that would be a mistake. Up to a certain limit the result would be noise only, but that limit overstepped trouble would follow right away. There are certain phrases, phrases of a peculiar character, phrases of the nature of that reference to Schönerer's grandmother, for instance, which not even the most spiritless schoolboy in the English-speaking world would allow to pass unavenged. One difference between schoolboys and the lawmakers of the Reichsrach seems to be that the lawmakers have no limit, no danger line. Apparently they may call each other, what they please, and go home unmutilated. Now, in fact they did have a scuffle on two occasions, but it was not on account of names called. There has been no scuffle where that was the cause. It is not to be inferred that the house lacks a sense of honour because it lacks delicacy. That would be an error. Ido was caught in a lie, and it profoundly disgraced him. The house cut him, turned its back upon him. He resigned his seat, otherwise he would have been expelled. But it was lenient with Grigorig, who had called Ido a cowardly blather-skite in debate. It merely went through the form of mildly censuring him. That did not trouble Grigorig. The Viennese say of themselves that they are an easygoing, pleasure-loving community, making the best of life, and not taking it very seriously. Nevertheless, they are grieved about the ways of their parliament, and say quite frankly that they are ashamed. They claim that the low condition of the parliament's manners is new, not old. A gentleman who was at the head of the government twenty years ago confirms this, and says that in his time the parliament was orderly and well behaved. An English gentleman of long residence here endorses this, and says that a low order of politicians originated the present forms of questionable speech on the stump some years ago, and imported them into the parliament. In that gracious bygone time, when a mild and good-tempered spirit was the atmosphere of our house, then the manner of our speaking was studiously formal and academic, and the storms and explosions of today were wholly unknown, etc. Translation of the opening remark of an editorial in this morning's Neufriopress December 1st. However, some day there will be a minister of etiquette and a sergeant at arms, and then things will go better. I mean, if parliament and the constitution survive the present storm. End of Chapter 11, Part 3, Curious Parliamentary Etiquette, read by John Greenman.