ellow in the crowded pit, affecting a familiarity with Simeon,
that permitted the taking of liberties with the orator's Christian
name, mildly amused him. He had no objection to hear 'Simmy' shouted, as
Louise de Seilles observed. She was of his mind, in regard to the rough
machinery of Freedom.

Skepsey entered the box.

'We shall soon be serious, Miss Nesta,' he said, after a look at Matilda
Pridden.

There was a prolonged roaring--on the cheerful side.

'And another word about security that your candidate will keep his
promises,' continued Simeon: 'You have his word, my friends!' And he
told the story of the old Governor of Goa, who wanted money and summoned
the usurers, and they wanted security; whereupon he laid his Hidalgo
hand on a cataract of Kronos-beard across his breast, and pulled
forth three white hairs, and presented them: 'And as honourably to
the usurious Jews as to the noble gentleman himself, that security was
accepted!'

Emerging from hearty clamours, the illustrative orator fell upon the
question of political specifics:--Mr. Victor Radnor trusted to English
good sense too profoundly to be offering them positive cures, as they
would hear the enemy say he did. Yet a bit of a cure may be offered,
if we 're not for pushing it too far, in pursuit of the science of
specifics, in the style of the foreign physician, probably Spanish,
who had no practice, and wished for leisure to let him prosecute his
anatomical and other investigations to discover his grand medical
nostrum. So to get him fees meanwhile he advertised a cure for
dyspepsia--the resource of starving doctors. And sure enough his patient
came, showing the grand fat fellow we may be when we carry more of the
deciduously mortal than of the scraggy vital upon our persons. Any one
at a glance would have prescribed water-cresses to him: water-cresses
exclusively to eat for a fortnight. And that the good physician did.
Away went his patient, returning at the end of the fortnight, lean, and
with the appetite of a Toledo blade for succulent slices. He vowed he
was the man. Our estimable doctor eyed him, tapped at him, pinched his
tender parts; and making him swear he was really the man, and had eaten
nothing whatever but unadulterated water-cresses in the interval, seized
on him in an ecstasy by the collar of his coat, pushed him into the
surgery, knocked him over, killed him, cut him up, and enjoyed the
felicity of exposing to view the very health