Worldly affairs were too much for him; he couldn't make them out at all.

This was observable when Bar said, incidentally, that he was happy to
have heard that we were soon to have the advantage of enlisting on
the good side, the sound and plain sagacity--not demonstrative or
ostentatious, but thoroughly sound and practical--of our friend Mr
Sparkler.

Ferdinand Barnacle laughed, and said oh yes, he believed so. A vote was
a vote, and always acceptable.

Bar was sorry to miss our good friend Mr Sparkler to-day, Mr Merdle.

'He is away with Mrs Merdle,' returned that gentleman, slowly coming
out of a long abstraction, in the course of which he had been fitting a
tablespoon up his sleeve. 'It is not indispensable for him to be on the
spot.'

'The magic name of Merdle,' said Bar, with the jury droop, 'no doubt
will suffice for all.'

'Why--yes--I believe so,' assented Mr Merdle, putting the spoon aside,
and clumsily hiding each of his hands in the coat-cuff of the other
hand. 'I believe the people in my interest down there will not make any
difficulty.'

'Model people!' said Bar. 'I am glad you approve of them,' said Mr
Merdle.

'And the people of those other two places, now,' pursued Bar, with a
bright twinkle in his keen eye, as it slightly turned in the direction
of his magnificent neighbour; 'we lawyers are always curious, always
inquisitive, always picking up odds and ends for our patchwork minds,
since there is no knowing when and where they may fit into some
corner;--the people of those other two places now? Do they yield so
laudably to the vast and cumulative influence of such enterprise and
such renown; do those little rills become absorbed so quietly
and easily, and, as it were by the influence of natural laws, so
beautifully, in the swoop of the majestic stream as it flows upon its
wondrous way enriching the surrounding lands; that their course is
perfectly to be calculated, and distinctly to be predicated?'

Mr Merdle, a little troubled by Bar's eloquence, looked fitfully about
the nearest salt-cellar for some moments, and then said hesitating:

'They are perfectly aware, sir, of their duty to Society. They will
return anybody I send to them for that purpose.'

'Cheering to know,' said Bar. 'Cheering to know.'

The three places in question were three little rotten holes in this
Island, containing three little ignorant, drunken, guzzling, dirty,
out-of-the-way constituencies, that had reeled into