trust which it was one of the proudest privileges of an Englishman
to possess - that trust which it was the proudest privilege of an
Englishman to hold. It may be mentioned as a proof of the great
general interest attaching to the contest, that a Lunatic whom
nobody employed or knew, went down to Verbosity with several
thousand pounds in gold, determined to give the whole away - which
he actually did; and that all the publicans opened their houses for
nothing. Likewise, several fighting men, and a patriotic group of
burglars sportively armed with life-preservers, proceeded (in
barouches and very drunk) to the scene of action at their own
expense; these children of nature having conceived a warm
attachment to our honourable friend, and intending, in their
artless manner, to testify it by knocking the voters in the
opposite interest on the head.
Our honourable friend being come into the presence of his
constituents, and having professed with great suavity that he was
delighted to see his good friend Tipkisson there, in his workingdress
- his good friend Tipkisson being an inveterate saddler, who
always opposes him, and for whom he has a mortal hatred - made them
a brisk, ginger-beery sort of speech, in which he showed them how
the dozen noblemen and gentlemen had (in exactly ten days from
their coming in) exercised a surprisingly beneficial effect on the
whole financial condition of Europe, had altered the state of the
exports and imports for the current half-year, had prevented the
drain of gold, had made all that matter right about the glut of the
raw material, and had restored all sorts of balances with which the
superseded noblemen and gentlemen had played the deuce - and all
this, with wheat at so much a quarter, gold at so much an ounce,
and the Bank of England discounting good bills at so much per
cent.! He might be asked, he observed in a peroration of great
power, what were his principles? His principles were what they
always had been. His principles were written in the countenances
of the lion and unicorn; were stamped indelibly upon the royal
shield which those grand animals supported, and upon the free words
of fire which that shield bore. His principles were, Britannia and
her sea-king trident! His principles were, commercial prosperity
co-existently with perfect and profound agricultural contentment;
but short of this he would never stop. His principles were, these,
- with the addition of his colours nailed to the mast, every man's
heart in the right place, every man's eye open, every man's hand
ready, every man's mind on the alert. His principles were these,
concurrently with a general revision of something - speaking
generally - and a possible readjustment of something else, not to
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be mentioned more particularly. His principles, to sum up all in a
word, were, Hearths and Altars, Labour and Capital, Crown and
Sceptre, Elephant and Castle. And now, if his good friend
Tipkisson required any further explanation from him, he (our
honourable friend) was there, willing and ready to give it.
Tipkisson, who all this time had stood conspicuous in the crowd,
with his arms folded and his eyes intently fastened on our
honourable friend: Tipkisson, who throughout our honourable
friend's address had not relaxed a muscle of his visage, but had
stood there, wholly unaffected by the torrent of eloquence: an
object of contempt and scorn to mankind (by which we mean, of
course, to the supporters of our honourable friend); Tipkisson now
said that he was a plain man (Cries of 'You are indeed!'), and that
what he wanted to know was, what our honourable friend and the
dozen noblemen and gentlemen were driving at?
Our honourable friend immediately replied, 'At the illimitable
perspective.'
It was considered by the whole assembly that this happy statement
of our honourable friend's political views ought, immediately, to
have settled Tipkisson's business and covered him with confusion;
but, that implacable person, regardless of the execrations that
were heaped upon him from all sides (by which we mean, of course,
from our honourable friend's side), persisted in retaining an
unmoved countenance, and obstinately retorted that if our
honourable friend meant that, he wished to know what THAT meant?
It was in repelling this most objectionable and indecent
opposition, that our honourable friend displayed his highest
qualifications for the representation of Verbosity. His warmest
supporters present, and those who were best acquainted with his
generalship, supposed that the moment was come when he would fall
back upon the sacred bulwarks of our nationality. No such thing.
He replied thus: 'My good friend Tipkisson, gentlemen, wishes to
know what I mean when he asks me what we are driving at, and when I
candidly tell him, at the illimitable perspective, he wishes (if I
understand him) to know what I mean?' - 'I do!' says Tipkisson,
amid cries of 'Shame' and 'Down with him.' 'Gentlemen,' says our
honourable friend, 'I will indulge my good friend Tipkisson, by
telling him, both what I mean and what I don't mean. (Cheers and
cries of 'Give it him!') Be it known to him then, and to all whom
it may concern, that I do mean altars, hearths, and homes, and that
I don't mean mosques and Mohammedanism!' The effect of this homethrust
was terrific. Tipkisson (who is a Baptist) was hooted down
and hustled out, and has ever since been regarded as a Turkish
Renegade who contemplates an early pilgrimage to Mecca. Nor was he
the only discomfited man. The charge, while it stuck to him, was
magically transferred to our honourable friend's opponent, who was
represented in an immense variety of placards as a firm believer in
Mahomet; and the men of Verbosity were asked to choose between our
honourable friend and the Bible, and our honourable friend's
opponent and the Koran. They decided for our honourable friend,
and rallied round the illimitable perspective.
It has been claimed for our honourable friend, with much appearance
of reason, that he was the first to bend sacred matters to
electioneering tactics. However this may be, the fine precedent
was undoubtedly set in a Verbosity election: and it is certain that
our honourable friend (who was a disciple of Brahma in his youth,
and was a Buddhist when we had the honour of travelling with him a
few years ago) always professes in public more anxiety than the
whole Bench of Bishops, regarding the theological and doxological
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opinions of every man, woman, and child, in the United Kingdom.
As we began by saying that our honourable friend has got in again
at this last election, and that we are delighted to find that he
has got in, so we will conclude. Our honourable friend cannot come
in for Verbosity too often. It is a good sign; it is a great
example
. It is to men like our honourable friend, and to contests
like those from which he comes triumphant, that we are mainly
indebted for that ready interest in politics, that fresh enthusiasm
in the discharge of the duties of citizenship, that ardent desire
to rush to the poll, at present so manifest throughout England.
When the contest lies (as it sometimes does) between two such men
as our honourable friend, it stimulates the finest emotions of our
nature, and awakens the highest admiration of which our heads and
hearts are capable.
It is not too much to predict that our honourable friend will be
always at his post in the ensuing session. Whatever the question
be, or whatever the form of its discussion; address to the crown,
election petition, expenditure of the public money, extension of
the public suffrage, education, crime; in the whole house, in
committee of the whole house, in select committee; in every
parliamentary discussion of every subject, everywhere: the
Honourable Member for Verbosity will most certainly be found.
OUR SCHOOL
WE went to look at it, only this last Midsummer, and found that the
Railway had cut it up root and branch. A great trunk-line had
swallowed the playground, sliced away the schoolroom, and pared off
the corner of the house: which, thus curtailed of its proportions,
presented itself, in a green stage of stucco, profilewise towards
the road, like a forlorn flat-iron without a handle, standing on
end.
It seems as if our schools were doomed to be the sport of change.
We have faint recollections of a Preparatory Day-School, which we
have sought in vain, and which must have been pulled down to make a
new street, ages ago. We have dim impressions, scarcely amounting
to a belief, that it was over a dyer's shop. We know that you went
up steps to it; that you frequently grazed your knees in doing so;
that you generally got your leg over the scraper, in trying to
scrape the mud off a very unsteady little shoe. The mistress of
the Establishment holds no place in our memory; but, rampant on one
eternal door-mat, in an eternal entry long and narrow, is a puffy
pug-dog, with a personal animosity towards us, who triumphs over
Time. The bark of that baleful Pug, a certain radiating way he had
of snapping at our undefended legs, the ghastly grinning of his
moist black muzzle and white teeth, and the insolence of his crisp
tail curled like a pastoral crook, all live and flourish. From an
otherwise unaccountable association of him with a fiddle, we
conclude that he was of French extraction, and his name FIDELE. He
belonged to some female, chiefly inhabiting a back-parlour, whose
life appears to us to have been consumed in sniffing, and in
wearing a brown beaver bonnet. For her, he would sit up and
balance cake upon his nose, and not eat it until twenty had been
counted. To the best of our belief we were once called in to
witness this performance; when, unable, even in his milder moments,
to endure our presence, he instantly made at us, cake and all.
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Why a something in mourning, called 'Miss Frost,' should still
connect itself with our preparatory school, we are unable to say.
We retain no impression of the beauty of Miss Frost - if she were
beautiful; or of the mental fascinations of Miss Frost - if she
were accomplished; yet her name and her black dress hold an
enduring place in our remembrance. An equally impersonal boy,
whose name has long since shaped itself unalterably into 'Master
Mawls,' is not to be dislodged from our brain. Retaining no
vindictive feeling towards Mawls - no feeling whatever, indeed - we
infer that neither he nor we can have loved Miss Frost. Our first
impression of Death and Burial is associated with this formless
pair. We all three nestled awfully in a corner one wintry day,
when the wind was blowing shrill, with Miss Frost's pinafore over
our heads; and Miss Frost told us in a whisper about somebody being
'screwed down.' It is the only distinct recollection we preserve
of these impalpable creatures, except a suspicion that the manners
of Master Mawls were susceptible of much improvement. Generally
speaking, we may observe that whenever we see a child intently
occupied with its nose, to the exclusion of all other subjects of
interest, our mind reverts, in a flash, to Master Mawls.
But, the School that was Our School before the Railroad came and
overthrew it, was quite another sort of place. We were old enough
to be put into Virgil when we went there, and to get Prizes for a
variety of polishing on which the rust has long accumulated. It
was a School of some celebrity in its neighbourhood - nobody could
have said why - and we had the honour to attain and hold the
eminent position of first boy. The master was supposed among us to
know nothing, and one of the ushers was supposed to know
everything. We are still inclined to think the first-named
supposition perfectly correct.
We have a general idea that its subject had been in the leather
trade, and had bought us - meaning Our School - of another
proprietor who was immensely learned. Whether this belief had any
real foundation, we are not likely ever to know now. The only
branches of education with which he showed the least acquaintance,
were, ruling and corporally punishing. He was always ruling
ciphering-books with a bloated mahogany ruler, or smiting the palms
of offenders with the same diabolical instrument, or viciously
drawing a pair of pantaloons tight with one of his large hands, and
caning the wearer with the other. We have no doubt whatever that
this occupation was the principal solace of his existence.
A profound respect for money pervaded Our School, which was, of
course, derived from its Chief. We remember an idiotic goggle-eyed
boy, with a big head and half-crowns without end, who suddenly
appeared as a parlour-boarder, and was rumoured to have come by sea
from some mysterious part of the earth where his parents rolled in
gold. He was usually called 'Mr.' by the Chief, and was said to
feed in the parlour on steaks and gravy; likewise to drink currant
wine. And he openly stated that if rolls and coffee were ever
denied him at breakfast, he would write home to that unknown part
of the globe from which he had come, and cause himself to be
recalled to the regions of gold. He was put into no form or class,
but learnt alone, as little as he liked - and he liked very little
- and there was a belief among us that this was because he was too
wealthy to be 'taken down.' His special treatment, and our vague
association of him with the sea, and with storms, and sharks, and
Coral Reefs occasioned the wildest legends to be circulated as his
history. A tragedy in blank verse was written on the subject - if
our memory does not deceive us, by the hand that now chronicles
these recollections - in which his father figured as a Pirate, and
; was shot for a voluminous catalogue of atrocities: first imparting
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to his wife the secret of the cave in which his wealth was stored,
and from which his only son's half-crowns now issued. Dumbledon
(the boy's name) was represented as 'yet unborn' when his brave
father met his fate; and the despair and grief of Mrs. Dumbledon at
that calamity was movingly shadowed forth as having weakened the
parlour-boarder's mind. This production was received with great
favour, and was twice performed with closed doors in the diningroom.
But, it got wind, and was seized as libellous, and brought
the unlucky poet into severe affliction. Some two years
afterwards, all of a sudden one day, Dumbledon vanished. It was
whispered that the Chief himself had taken him down to the Docks,
and re-shipped him for the Spanish Main; but nothing certain was
ever known about his disappearance. At this hour, we cannot
thoroughly disconnect him from California.
Our School was rather famous for mysterious pupils. There was
another - a heavy young man, with a large double-cased silver
watch, and a fat knife the handle of which was a perfect tool-box -
who unaccountably appeared one day at a special desk of his own,
erected close to that of the Chief, with whom he held familiar
converse. He lived in the parlour, and went out for his walks, and
never took the least notice of us - even of us, the first boy -
unless to give us a deprecatory kick, or grimly to take our hat off
and throw it away, when he encountered us out of doors, which
unpleasant ceremony he always performed as he passed - not even
condescending to stop for the purpose. Some of us believed that
the classical attainments of this phenomenon were terrific, but
that his penmanship and arithmetic were defective, and he had come
there to mend them; others, that he was going to set up a school,
and had paid the Chief 'twenty-five pound down,' for leave to see
Our School at work. The gloomier spirits even said that he was
going to buy us; against which contingency, conspiracies were set
on foot for a general defection and running away. However, he
never did that. After staying for a quarter, during which period,
though closely observed, he was never seen to do anything but make
pens out of quills, write small hand in a secret portfolio, and
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