First Old Dame. "Well, my dear, and what are you doing for the country?"
Second ditto. I am knitting socks for the troops.
First Old Dame (robustly). "Knitting? I am learning to shoot!"
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Sir John Lubbock, whose Life, by Mr. Horace Hutchinson, Macmillan publishes in two volumes, was one of the most honourable men who figures in public life during the last half-century. He was also one of the most widely honoured. Under his name on the title-page of the book appears a prodigious paragraph in small type enumerating the high distinctions bestowed upon him by British and foreign literary and scientific bodies. Forestalling the leisure of a bank-holiday I have counted the list and find it contains no fewer than fifty-two high distinctions, one for every week of the year. These were won not by striking genius or brilliant talent. Sir John Lubbock, to preserve a name which the crowning honour of the peerage did not displace in the public mind, was by nature and daily habit constitutionally industrious. After Eton he joined his father's naking business. In his diary under date Christmas Day, 1852, being the nineteenth year of his age, he gives an account of how he spends his day. It is too long to quote, but, beginningby "getting up at half-past six," it includes steady reading in natural history, poetry, political economy, science, mathematics and German. Breakfast, luncheon and tea are mentioned in due course; but there is no reference to dinner or supper. These functions were doubtless regarded by the young student as frivolous waste of time.
I knew Lubbock personally during his long membership of the House of Commons. He had neither grace of diction nor charm or oratory. But he had a way of getting Bills through all their stages which exceeded the average attained by more attractive speakers. In his references to Parliamentary life he mentions that Gladstone, when he proposed to abolish the Income Tax, told him that he intended to meet the deficiency partly by increase of the death duties. That was a fundamental principle of the Budget Lord Randolph Churchill prepared during his brief Chancellorship of the Exchequer. It was left to Sir William Harcourt to realise the fascinating scheme, later to be extended by Mr. Lloyd George. Another of Lord Randolph's personally unfulfilled schemes was the introduction of one-pound notes. In a letter dated 16th December 1886, he confidentially communicated his project to Lubbock. When his book reaches its second edition Mr. Hutchinson will have an opportunity of correcting a misapprehension set forth on page 48. He writes that, on June 21st, 1895, "all were startled by an announcement that Mr. Galdstone had resigned and that Parliament was to be dissolved." The surprise was not unnatural since Lord Roseberry was Prime Minister at this memorable crisis.
I can see some good in most people, but none whatever in those chairmen of meetings who, being put up to introduce distinguished speakers, thoroughly well worth listening
