pardon; 'But what
was tokenz?'

'Marks,' said Mr Podsnap; 'Signs, you know, Appearances--Traces.'

'Ah! Of a Orse?' inquired the foreign gentleman.

'We call it Horse,' said Mr Podsnap, with forbearance. 'In England,
Angleterre, England, We Aspirate the "H," and We Say "Horse." Only our
Lower Classes Say "Orse!"'

'Pardon,' said the foreign gentleman; 'I am alwiz wrong!'

'Our Language,' said Mr Podsnap, with a gracious consciousness of being
always right, 'is Difficult. Ours is a Copious Language, and Trying to
Strangers. I will not Pursue my Question.'

But the lumpy gentleman, unwilling to give it up, again madly said,
'ESKER,' and again spake no more.

'It merely referred,' Mr Podsnap explained, with a sense of meritorious
proprietorship, 'to Our Constitution, Sir. We Englishmen are Very Proud
of our Constitution, Sir. It Was Bestowed Upon Us By Providence. No
Other Country is so Favoured as This Country.'

'And ozer countries?--' the foreign gentleman was beginning, when Mr
Podsnap put him right again.

'We do not say Ozer; we say Other: the letters are "T" and "H;" You say
Tay and Aish, You Know; (still with clemency). The sound is "th"--"th!"'

'And OTHER countries,' said the foreign gentleman. 'They do how?'

'They do, Sir,' returned Mr Podsnap, gravely shaking his head; 'they
do--I am sorry to be obliged to say it--AS they do.'

'It was a little particular of Providence,' said the foreign gentleman,
laughing; 'for the frontier is not large.'

'Undoubtedly,' assented Mr Podsnap; 'But So it is. It was the Charter
of the Land. This Island was Blest, Sir, to the Direct Exclusion of
such Other Countries as--as there may happen to be. And if we were all
Englishmen present, I would say,' added Mr Podsnap, looking round upon
his compatriots, and sounding solemnly with his theme, 'that there is in
the Englishman a combination of qualities, a modesty, an independence,
a responsibility, a repose, combined with an absence of everything
calculated to call a blush into the cheek of a young person, which one
would seek in vain among the Nations of the Earth.'

Having delivered this little summary, Mr Podsnap's face flushed, as he
thought of the remote possibility of its being at all qualified by
any prejudiced citizen of any other country; and, with his favourite
right-arm flourish, he put the rest of Europe and the whole of Asia,
Africa, and America nowhere.

The audience were much edified by this passage