chamber in the same order as it entered.
This ends the ceremony, which has lasted
but very little over ten minutes. In five
minutes more the House of Lords is left to
the sole occupation of the dapper gentlemen
in black.

We have heard a great deal of the powers
of the Press, and have experienced the
wonders of the electric telegraph; but those who
had the privilege of spending ten minutes
with Her Majesty, in opening Parliament,
must have been a little startled on reaching
Whitehall, to be offered an evening
newspaper containing the Queen's speech; the last
sentence of which from the Queen's lips had
hardly died on the ear. Wonder, too, would
be increased by the recollection that although
the Reporters' gallery was filled, not one of
the Gentlemen of the Press had taken a note.
By what magic then, could the speech have
been so quickly printed?

Everybody knows that the "Queen's Speech"
does not deserve its name. It is not the
Queen's; nor is it a speech;—it is a document.
The First Minister sketches it, subsequent
Cabinet Councils reduce it to shape, and it is
then submitted to Her Majesty. When
returned with her approval, the speech is
divulged (at a ministerial dinner) to the non-
cabinet members of the administration. Thus
the mere topics of the manifesto ooze out at
the Clubs the night before the Speech is spoken.
But it is the actual text which the public is
eager for; and, that no time may be lost,
emissaries from the London evening papers
appear at the Treasury about the time Her
Majesty is preparing her toilette, at
Buckingham Palace, for the ceremony. The
moment the first gun announces that the
procession is in motion, the evening paper
envoys are obliged with copies of the document;
and before the Queen has done speaking
in the House her words are in type.

Formerly the Gentlemen of the Press were
locked in a room in the Treasury till the
cortège was on its way back. Some years
ago an escape was made from this official
durance, which caused some amusement. The
editor of the Government paper in Dublin was
most anxious to start for Liverpool by one
o'clock, to catch the packet for Dublin. The
Speech was handed some time before that
hour, and the key was turned as usual.
Presently, however, the clerks and messengers
were alarmed by frantic cries of " Fire!"
They opened the door—the room was filled
with smoke. The editor, in the confusion,
made his escape, leaving the frightened clerks
to extinguish the harmless sheet of brown
paper he had intentionally ignited.

We, of the present day, improve on the
Irish Editor's plan. His was a fire escape;
ours are lightning conductors. It is at such a
time as this, that the wonders of the Electric
Telegraph become startlingly apparent. The
City of Edinburgh is about four hundred miles
from Buckingham Palace. While the State
procession is wending its slow way back from
Westminster, the wires are charged; and—
marvellous fact!—at the same moment that Her
Majesty is alighting at the steps of the Marble
Hall, several of her lieges in the Scottish
capital, are beginning to read her Speech;
which has taken no more than fifteen minutes
to transmit. She dines at Windsor; and
before the banquet is over, the text, verbatim
et literatim, of what she had uttered at a
quarter past two, has reached Dublin. Before
the royal family has retired to rest, the
Speech is in every principal town in the
Kingdom. In these cases there had been
no anticipation, for the Speech was read off
at the London Telegraph Station from the
evening papers.

A DARK SUSPICION.

"TAKE steam, Capt'en? " cried a clear
voice from the hurricane deck of a huge
tugboat, with two funnels; which—with a large
ship under each arm, and a brig and a
schooner astern—was majestically walking
past our little schooner, up the broad current
of the Mississippi.

"What'll you do it for, from here ?"
returned our old man, poking his head up the
companion-way. The hoarse, heavy pantings
of the steamer's engines ceased for a moment,
as she stopped abreast of us.

"Five and twenty dollars."

"No!"

"Go on ahead! "—and away moved the
steamer with her train, looming for a minute
through the morning mist like a great castle.
We, in the little schooner, were left bumping
in the swell she made, against the branches
of trees, snags, and drift, that bordered the
river's bank, where we were lying with no
other mooring than a single rope, fast round
the trunk of a tree ashore. We had been a
week from the Belize, trying to sail up
against the current; and had not yet reached
"English Turn," a bend in the river; where,
once upon a time, "Britishers" were
obliged to turn back about half way to New
Orleans. The wind was again unfavourable,
so we were eventually compelled to take
steam at the price demanded; and, under the
auspices of one of the numerous tugs
continually panting past, we were soon steadily
and rapidly shortening the distance to
Orleans. The banks of the river, as we
passed, presented nothing very striking in
the way of scenery; here and there some
pretty houses, in the rnidst of plantations—
nearer the mouth the shore was mere swamp.
The tug steam-boats attract most attention.
Instead of two steamers to one ship—as you
may see almost any day at the Nore, creeping
up the river, or clawing round the Foreland
—you observe five, six, and even seven vessels
to one steamer; and she steaming handsomely
against a current seldom flowing less than
four miles an hour.