ing
generalizations and ability to beat the drum humorous could swing halls
of meeting from the grasp of an enemy, and then ascend on incalescent
adjectives to the popular idea of the sublime. He was the artistic orator
of Corn Law Repeal--the Manchester flood, before which time Whigs were,
since which they have walked like spectral antediluvians, or floated as
dead canine bodies that are sucked away on the ebb of tides and flung
back on the flow, ignorant whether they be progressive or retrograde.
Timothy Turbot assisted in that vast effort. It should have elevated him
beyond the editorship of a country newspaper. Why it did not do so his
antagonists pretended to know, and his friends would smile to hear. The
report was that he worshipped the nymph Whisky.

Timothy's article had plucked Beauchamp out of bed; Beauchamp's card in
return did the same for him.

'Commander Beauchamp? I am heartily glad to make your acquaintance, sir;
I've been absent, at work, on the big business we have in common, I
rejoice to say, and am behind my fellow townsmen in this pleasure and
lucky I slept here in my room above, where I don't often sleep, for the
row of the machinery--it 's like a steamer that won't go, though it's
always starting ye,' Mr. Timothy said in a single breath, upon entering
the back office of the Gazette, like unto those accomplished violinists
who can hold on the bow to finger an incredible number of notes, and may
be imaged as representing slow paternal Time, that rolls his capering
dot-headed generation of mortals over the wheel, hundreds to the minute.
'You'll excuse my not shaving, sir, to come down to your summons without
an extra touch to the neck-band.'

Beauchamp beheld a middle-sized round man, with loose lips and pendant
indigo jowl, whose eyes twinkled watery, like pebbles under the
shore-wash, and whose neck-band needed an extra touch from fingers other
than his own.

'I am sorry to have disturbed you so early,' he replied.

'Not a bit, Commander Beauchamp, not a bit, sir. Early or late, and ay
ready--with the Napiers; I'll wash, I'll wash.'

'I came to speak to you of this article of yours on me. They tell me in
the office that you are the writer. Pray don't "Commander" me so
much.--It's not customary, and I object to it.'

'Certainly, certainly,' Timothy acquiesced.

'And for the future, Mr. Turbot, please to be good enough not to allude
in print to any of my performances here and there. Your in