..I should say rather--er--what it
comes to is this: the honourable member for North--South Clapham seems
to be labouring under a total, an entire, a complete (emphatic
gesture, which throws him off his tack)--a contire--a complete disill-
-misunderstanding of the things which he himself relies on as--as--as
a backing-up of the things that he would have us take or--er--accept
and receive as the right sort of reduction--deduction from the facts
of...in fact, from the facts of the case.' Then the poor dear heaves a
deep sigh of relief, which is drowned by other members in a hideous
cachinnation meant to express mirth.
And the odd thing is that the mirth is quite sincere and quite
friendly. The speaker has just scored a point, though you mightn't
think it. He has just scored a point in the true House of Commons
manner. Possibly you have never been to the House of Commons, and
suspect that I have caricatured its manner. Not at all. Indeed, to
save space in these pages, I have rather improved it. If a phonograph
were kept in the house, you would learn from it that the average
sentence of the average speaker is an even more grotesque abortion
than I have adumbrated. Happily for the prestige of the House,
phonographs are excluded. Certain skilled writers--modestly dubbing
themselves `reporters'--are admitted, and by them cosmos is conjured
out of chaos.
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