understand he is intended. In case your little
meeting——

Tumultuous disapprobation.

——comes off as intended, I know that you will make
it your friendly business to be present,——

"Money makes the mayor to go," and hisses.

——in order to remove any misunderstanding that
may have arisen with respect to my  parliamentary
conduct in the minds of those for whom I have,
notwithstanding, the most unfeigned regard.                                                 .

Howls of indignant incredulity.

Believe me, my dear Mr. Mayor,
With my best compliments to Mrs. Razon,

"O, bother her!"

Your faithful representative,
ANDREW CARELITTEL.

It was at the conclusion of this epistle, and
of the storm of disapprobation which followed
it, that the high pressure under which
Fitzblazer, Q.C., had been so long dangerously
labouring, could be maintained no longer,
and that that eminent counsel started—burst
—to his feet (his five feet one-and-a-half),
with a " My Lord; that is to say, I mean
Sir."

Not more swiftly is the too triumphant
note of some monarch of the poultry-yard
echoed by some rival chanticleer fluttering
over the paling which divides their respective
empires, than were the first accents of
Fitzblazer replied to by Colonel Chuttybung,
East India Company's Service.

"By your leave, Mr. Fitzblazer," he cried,
letting fall a glance of contempt from his
elevation of seven feet in his shoes (where
such a number is not common) upon the
head of the diminutive lawyer. " Mr. Mayor
and fellow townsmen, I think it is MY place
to address you first."

"What, sir," cried the aggrieved Q.C.,
gathering up his coat tails as though they
were the skirts of a silk gown, in preparation
for a flight into the highest latitudes of legal
invective, " WHAT, sir,——"

"You said that before," exclaimed a voice
from the body of the hall, in a tone most
singularly distinct and quiet, " you did,
indeed, old spitfire."

If a bombshell had burst precisely in the
centre of us, it could scarcely have produced
more astonishment, nor indeed, as it turned
out, much greater mischief, than did this
ridiculous interruption. There is a
Fitzblazer party and a Chuttybung
party in Pixham, of course; and, when the
Chuttyburgers saw their chieftain smile, as if in
spite of himself, they broke into a derisive
cheer.

"Colonel Chuttybung," cried the lawyer,
pale with passion, and delaying upon the
name, as a bird delays upon its twitter, only
with the quaver of fury, " is this, sir, IS this
your doing?"

"Go it, little one! " said the voice again,
in the tone of a patron.

"I protest," exclaimed the colonel, " upon
my most sacred word of honour——"

"O, yes; WalKER! " cried another voice,
in a tone of disbelief, and proceeding, this
time, from the seats immediately behind the
speaker; " we ain't agoing to believe that,
kurnel. neither."

It was now for the gallant Chuttybung to
turn a shade or two yellower than Indian
suns had made him. "Only let that man
stand forth," cried he, " who spoke those
words, and I'll——"

"Chutty, Chutty," interrupted a voice,
reprovingly, from the reporters' table, " you
are intoxicated; you know you are; you
have had more than is good for you."

The whole assembly, with the exception of
the object of this sarcasm, was here
convulsed; the habits of the Eastern potentate
being too well known in Pixham not to make
the remark exceedingly piquant.

There were three reporters at the little
table in the orchestra, and the colonel
furiously insisted that the offender should
be thrown down to him at once for
immediate execution. In vain all three
protested that neither of them had uttered a
syllable; that they were convinced of his
present sobriety, and that his habitual
temperance had been a proverb among them for
years: the representative of the Pixham
Independent—which had cast aspersions
upon Chuttybung with regard to this par-
ticular subject before—was singled out by a
body of the colonel's admirers for the sacrifice.
They seized upon him incontinently,
and had his legs over the balcony in a
twinkling; in another moment he would
have been cast upon the platform into the
arms of his gigantic foe, as some unhappy
martyr in old times might have been introduced
into the arena occupied by a dinnerless
lion.

"It was the True Blue," cried an unknown
voice, denouncingly, " it was Jones of the
True Blue, who did it."

The Fitzblazer faction only wanted an
excuse to wreak, in their turn, their animosity
against the conservative journal; losing sight
of the obvious absurdity of an attack upon
his own chieftain having been made by the
scribe of the Chuttybung paper, they rushed
upon this maligned individual and bore him
away to the opposite side of the orchestra, in
order to drop him likewise.

The tumult baffled all description. The
spectacle viewed from beneath was the most
striking which these eyes have ever
witnessed. The enraged colonel, with his back
to us, looking up anticipative of his helpless
prey, but yet unwilling that so plump a
carcass should fall, as it was almost certain to
do, immediately upon him. The mayor, who