SMOKING AN OUTRAGE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19683, 28 December 1933, Page 12

SMOKING AN OUTRAGE

THE SERGEANT SHOCKED. “Battle smoke upcurling in the House of Commons? Surely not? “A cigarette—a lighted cigarette carelessly, nonchalantly held by female lips, while the Commons, in Parliament assembled, discuss the regulation of imported foreign fish? Impossible!” (writes amusingly the Parliamentary correspondent of the London “Morning Post”). “Could the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms, sitting, sword at side, in his highbacked chair, believe his eyes? H? could. “Did he rise, tugging at his swo'd hilt? He did not. “He stared, high above the Speaker's Chair, above the Press Gallery, at that stone-work screen behind which women visitors to the House of Commons sit. There, sure enough, while the nation’s fish suppers were being regulated below’, rose puffs of cigarette smoke, and waxed and waned the little red glow. “The Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms remained calm. There must be no unseemly fracas. Was it not to the grille which then fronted that very gallery that suffragettes, shouting, had padlocked themselves years ago? “Besides, why be unjustly censoriou-! The unconsciously sacrilegious smoker was probably reacting naturally, if absentmindedly, to a malodorous subject of debate. The Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms beckoned to the attendant who stood behind him. He whispered. The attendant looked upwards, bowed and departed. “A pause . . . The Deputy Sergeanr-at-Arms looked up once more. His brow became smooth. His features relaxed. The last puff had been puffed. The little red glow was snuffed.”