Press, Platform, and Parliament. By Spencer Leigh Hughes. (Nisbet. 12s.
8d. net.)—Mr. Hughes has written an amusing book on his experiences as a journalist, a lecturer, and a Member of Parliament. He abounds in good stories ; his account of the ex-Kaiser's " Eastern Offensive " in 1898, which Mr. Hughes reported for his newspaper, is among the most comical of them, He tells us that, while staying at Barmouth, he was informed by his editor that a well-known dramatist and Socialist had been lost on the hills, and,that the paper required a full account of the disaster. Mr. Hughes applied to the hotel-porter, but that omniscient being had never heard of the dramatist, who lived bard by. Mr. Hughes suggested that he was a public speaker, whereupon the porter said that " a little man with side-whiskers " had been speaking on tho sands, and that he might be " the party" in question. Such is fame. Lord Lambourneis credited with a story of two Bishops. " One Bishop said that he had met a workman who explained his absence from church by saying, The first time I went there they throw water in my face, and the second time they tied me up to a woman that I've had to keep ever since.' The other Bishop remarked grimly, ' And the third time he goes they'll throw dirt on him.' "
Previous page
