iest patient ever seen under
dissecting hand, by favour of the fortunate discovery of the specific
for him. All to further science!--to which, in spite of the petitions
of all the scientific bodies of the civilized world, he fell a martyr
on the scaffold, poor gentleman! But we know politics to be no such
empirical science.

Simeon ingeniously interwove his analogy. He brought it home to Beaves
Urmsing, whose laugh drove any tone of apology out of it. Yet the orator
was asked: 'Do you take politics for a joke, Simmy?'

He countered his questioner: 'Just to liberate you from your moribund
state, my friend.' And he told the story of the wrecked sailor, found
lying on the sands, flung up from the foundered ship of a Salvation
captain, and how, that nothing could waken him, and there he lay fit
for interment; until presently a something of a voice grew down into his
ears; and it was his old chum Polly, whom he had tied to a board to
give her a last chance in the surges; and Polly shaking the wet from her
feathers, and shouting: 'Polly tho dram dry!'--which struck on the nob
of Jack's memory, to revive all the liquorly tricks of the cabin under
Salvationism, and he began heaving, and at last he shook in a lazy way,
and then from sputter to sputter got his laugh loose; and he sat up, and
cried; 'That did it! Now to business!' for he was hungry. 'And when I
catch the ring of this world's laugh from you, my friend...!' Simeon's
application of the story was drowned.

After the outburst, they heard his friend again interruptingly: 'You
keep that tongue of yours from wagging, as it did when you got round the
old widow woman for her money, Simmy!'

Victor leaned forward. Simeon towered. He bellowed

'And you keep that tongue of yours from committing incest on a lie!'

It was like a lightning-flash in the theatre. The man went under.
Simeon flowed. Conscience reproached him with the little he had done for
Victor, and he had now his congenial opportunity.

Up in the box, the powers of the orator were not so cordially esteemed.
To Matilda Pridden, his tales were barely decently the flesh and the
devil smothering a holy occasion to penetrate and exhort. Dartrey sat
rigid, as with the checked impatience for a leap. Nesta looked at Louise
when some one was perceived on the stage bending to her father: It
was Mr. Peridon; he never once raised his face. Apparently he was not
intelligible or audible but the next moment Victor sprang