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Show SHALL NOT DELAY. 1 ' J '11 pa v you in I'a ris.. ' ' said Mark Twain to the shopkeeper from whom he negotiated the purchase of a pair of glover upon the eve of his departure on the voyage that renlte.l in the publication publica-tion of "Innocents Abroad." The shopkeeper, shop-keeper, however, was not bubbling over with enthusiasm at the prospect of a trip to Europe and the Holy Land and suggested payment upon the spot, a suggestion sug-gestion which brought the American author down from the clouds long enough to complete his purehases. While, procrastination was Twain's habit, on this particular instance he seemed to be obse;-,sed with the Mea that nil America Amer-ica was en route to the French capital and that payment could be delayed just as well as not. "Promises are often made in this world which cannot be attributed to absent-mindedness, absent-mindedness, as in the case of dear old ; Mark. Twain, but are made to delay taking tak-ing certain actions in the hope that something will turn up to prevent their being carried out. This is doubtless true of some of the British statesmen who voted in favor of giving homo rule to Ireland, a question once supposed to have been definitely settled, but which has again become a-cute in the past two or three weeks. The Nationalists have become weary of waiting for the law to be carried into effect, but have been told to keep on waiting until after the war. This course has not proven at all satisfactory and the Irish leaders are insisting that the government make good. We do not know what the upshot of the matter will be. There will be some bitter speeches in the house of commons without doubt, and perhaps disturbances on the other side of the channel. These incidents will be disagreeable, dis-agreeable, if not- dangerous, at this particular par-ticular time. It would have been much better had the law been put into ef-fei" ef-fei" in the first place. Chancellor von Bethmann-TIollweg also has been making promises, one of them being the restoration of the franchise fran-chise taken away by Prussia in lSb'8. " After the close of the war," said the chancellor in his speech in the reichstag. Now if there is any intention upon the part of the imperial government to restore re-store this franchise such action could be taken right away with beneficial results. re-sults. After the war will not do. If Germany should triumph the promise will not be carried out, and if Germany should lose, which is more than probable, proba-ble, the imperial government will follow the Russian autocracy into the discard and the German people will restore the franchise without any further delay. |