WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF?
Ow Friday night " a stranger" was found in the House of Com- mons; and the incident created almost as much sensation as a blue-bottle in a girl's school. Why this alarming cry of " stran-
ger " " Stranger" than what ? Surely. not stranger than many persons with whom the House is familiar. Where is the reason for manifesting such apprehension at the presence of a stray gentleman ? It can • scarcely need the whole House to hunt him out, like schoolboys after a stray cat. One does not hear that Mr. Alder, on Friday night, led the Mem- bers a " chevy " in and out of the lobbies, skulked under the benches, spat and swore at the Sergeant, flew at the Speaker, tore up stairs into the housekeeper's bedroom, and bad to be poked out from under the bed with a carpet-broom. Why, then, needs the Sergeant-at-Arms invoke the whole House to turn out the " in- truder "?
We know it is said that the House is very jealous of delegating its privileges. if any individual gentleman were to insist upon being called down to the street-door every time a " stranger" mistook his way out of the house, on the score of not parting with his undoubted privileges to his own hall-porter, there is not a Member however honourable—not Mr. Charles Wynne himself, but would say that the punctilious gentleman was a very silly fellow. Does it not follow that the honourable House is six- hundred-and-fifty-eight times as silly ?
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