at the table, and the widow of the deceased Bellman in the foreground, bearing the badge of her late husband's office, during this momentous interregnum formed a subject which I feel surprised has not yet been seized upon by Hayter or Wilkie. A bustle is heard in the middle of the hall—an arm bearing aloft a best white beaver, waves impatiently forward to the chair—a way is made, and Mr Padden mounts the steps, and turns towards the audience as if in act to speak. He speaks, he swells, he waves his hand, he thumps the table. Oh heavens! oh earth! oh sea! he concludes a powerful harangue by proposing Hicks! What! Padden propose Hicks—when he knew—when all Buzzleton—when all England knew, that Simpkinson supported Tapps! Astonishment kept the whole assembly silent for a space, which was only interrupted by the short proud cough with which the orator cleared his throat. His throat was at last cleared; he stood forward a little, and, beginning in a low tone of voice, he worked himself into a paroxysm of eloquence; then sinking his tone again, went through the whole compass of his wonderful voice, fleeching, praying, roaring, bullying, scolding, stamping, and thumping, sometimes the little table, sometimes one hand against the other, till it was impossible not to believe that he was Demosthenes, and was speaking Greek. I have every reason to believe, that what he did say was, in fact, as good every bit as that illustrious language to the greater part of his auditory. "When I reflect," he said, "on the momentaneous interests for which we are here dissembled, I feel that in this question is evolved, not the mere office of bellman, high and honourable as that office is, but the glory, the might, the power and independence of the rate-payers of Buzzleton. What! are we to cringe to a divaricated hallucination? Are we to bend ourselves at the shrine of a dephlogisticated parabola, and yield intense submission to the dictates of an anathematized hyperbole? Perish the thought! Tapps, and no other—no Hicks—creeping through existence under the adumbrated essence of metaphorical seclusion!—no Hicks—bearing aloft in one hand the embodied ingenuity of detruncated velocity; and, in the other, the faded majesty of meretricious susceptibility—no Hicks, with the tiger eyes of humanity breathing forth the condensed malignity of atrocious horror!—Tapps! Tapps only, shall be bellman of this town!"—(great cheers.)
But it is impossible to report the speech as it deserves, and, therefore, as I recollect reading in some book of criticism, that the great art of elevating one's hero, consists not in mere description, but in representing the effects produced by him upon others, I shall proceed to the next morning, namely Wednesday the 12th, when the following correspondence took place.
Chapter III.
But here, before entering on this very disagreeable portion of my task, I cannot forbear venting a few sighs over the uncertainty of friendship. A chain that it has taken years to rivet, may be puffed in fifty pieces by a few syllables;—in that respect resembling the knot which jugglers tie upon a handkerchief, apparently strong enough to hang the most determined and fattest of suicides, but which, by being simply blown upon, untwines itself in an instant, and leaves not a vestige of its ever having been tied. Oh juggler's knot! oh friendship! (not to continue the interjections, and say) oh love! you ought all three to be ashamed of yourselves, and not be blown aside by a few puffs of wind, whether those puffs are mere inarticulate blowings, such as those with which, in my impatient youth, I used to cool my pudding, or form themselves into words and syllable men's names. Who could have thought that a friendship of twenty years could have been dissolved by such a very inconsiderable event as the election of John Tapps to the bellmanship of Buzzleton? Yet, so it was; and the volcano that smouldered in the bosom of Mr Padden was blown up to explosive heat, and astounded our peaceable town with a prodigious eruption, in the manner I now proceed to relate.
On the evening of Tuesday, our amiable friend Bob waited impatiently
