dy of legislators, like a larger and
better-known body of the same genus, a great deal more noisy, and not a
whit more profound, are patriotically dozing away in company, far into
the night, for their country's good.

Among this knot of sage and learned men, no one was so eminently
distinguished, during many years, for the quiet modesty of his appearance
and demeanour, as Nicholas Tulrumble, the well-known coal-dealer.
However exciting the subject of discussion, however animated the tone of
the debate, or however warm the personalities exchanged, (and even in
Mudfog we get personal sometimes,) Nicholas Tulrumble was always the
same. To say truth, Nicholas, being an industrious man, and always up
betimes, was apt to fall asleep when a debate began, and to remain asleep
till it was over, when he would wake up very much refreshed, and give his
vote with the greatest complacency. The fact was, that Nicholas
Tulrumble, knowing that everybody there had made up his mind beforehand,
considered the talking as just a long botheration about nothing at all;
and to the present hour it remains a question, whether, on this point at
all events, Nicholas Tulrumble was not pretty near right.

Time, which strews a man's head with silver, sometimes fills his pockets
with gold. As he gradually performed one good office for Nicholas
Tulrumble, he was obliging enough, not to omit the other. Nicholas began
life in a wooden tenement of four feet square, with a capital of two and
ninepence, and a stock in trade of three bushels and a-half of coals,
exclusive of the large lump which hung, by way of sign-board, outside.
Then he enlarged the shed, and kept a truck; then he left the shed, and
the truck too, and started a donkey and a Mrs. Tulrumble; then he moved
again and set up a cart; the cart was soon afterwards exchanged for a
waggon; and so he went on like his great predecessor Whittington--only
without a cat for a partner--increasing in wealth and fame, until at last
he gave up business altogether, and retired with Mrs. Tulrumble and
family to Mudfog Hall, which he had himself erected, on something which
he attempted to delude himself into the belief was a hill, about a
quarter of a mile distant from the town of Mudfog.

About this time, it began to be murmured in Mudfog that Nicholas
Tulrumble was growing vain and haughty; that prosperity and success had
corrupted the simplicity of his manners, and tainted the natural goodness
of his h