pressure. Landlords are enjoined to take the utmost
care of him. Pale-faced runners from the attorney's
office are affected to his service, partially as body
servants, partially as spies and guardians, to take
care that he does not run away, that he does not
throw himself into the arms of the other side;
and while they pamper him like a prize pig, to
prevent him from eating and drinking himself
into a state of blind oblivion of his duties
towards Stradlings and against Styles. For
witnesses are mortal men, even as voters at
contested elections are, and will sometimes fade
away from the paths of prudence. By the way,
now that I think of it, the witness, generically
speaking, is almost identical in manners,
custom, countenance, and conversation, with the
Voter! And voters are, like witnesses, a species
of humanity typical and peculiar in their
characteristics. I once had a vote for the county,
but I never voted. I was made aware of
being seised of a vote for some chambers in
town, by the Radical party (my own, oh bitter
scorn!) "fighting the battle of the constitution
in the Registration Courts," and objecting, on
some technical ground, to my qualification.
They gained the day, but the victory was
disastrous to them, as they had acted (aha!) under
the erroneous impression that I was a red-hot
Tory; but I humbly thank the revising
barrister for striking my name off the register.
What should I have done with a vote? Does it
concern you, or me, or any other man, in the
present pure and healthy state of the political
atmosphere, save the regularly stamped,
approved, and typical voter, whether Sir John
Grampus or General Bounce be the man for
Westminster?

There are times when the witness rises to the
dignity of a public character; but it is more
frequently in connexion with an election petition
before a parliamentary committee than as a
witness in one of the courts at Westminster,
that he becomes remarkable. Take Giles Jolter,
for instance, assistant-ostler at the Red
Herring on Horseback, Chumpsford. The defeated
candidate for the representation of that
important borough in parliament has petitioned
against the sitting member. It is the old story:
bribery, corruption, treating, intimidation, and
the rest of it. The lawyers on both sides rub
their hands and chuckle; for it is a fat case,
which, on a moderate computation, will cost
about fifty pounds an hour during hearing.
Giles Jolter is brought, to his intense amazement,
and for the first time in his life, from
Chumpsford to London by express train. With
him, perhaps, also as witnesses, may be Mr.
Chawchobbs, landlord of the Pickled Egg beer-shop,
and two or three other agricultural worthies in
hobnails and fustian. They all live on the
before-mentioned fat of the land. They are in a
continual state of beatitude, arising from
unlimited feeds of bran-mash, oilcake, and scientifically
sliced mangel-wurzel. They might have
Revalenta Arabica, Thorley's food, Indian
pigmeal, for the asking for. They wax fat and kick,
and their bones are full of marrow. One of the
pale-faced runners, selected for the post on the
ground of his being a man about town, is
detached to show them the sights and the lions of
London. At theatres you may see Chawchobbs
fast asleep, with his head leaning on his arms, in
the upper boxes. It would never do to take a
valuable witness to the pit. At music-halls
Giles Jolter's horse-collar grin pervades the
stalls. He thinks the Perfect Cure the greatest
terpsichorean marvel of the age, yet still offers
to back himself for "half a poond" to "joomp agin
him." He speculates upon the number of pints
of ale consumed by "Any Other Man," preparatory
to his stump oration; and at night, when
he returns to his lodgings, disturbs the whole
house with unearthly yelps and rumblings, in his
attempt to imitate the pleasing melody of In
the Strand—the Strand. Nothing is spared, in
short, to make Giles Jolter's witness-life a
carnival of joy—this poor conscript of toilsome
husbandry, who at home fares worse than the
horses he helps to tend, and has but the Union
to look forward to when his joints have grown
too stiff for his task of currycombing and rubbing
down!—but the scheme of his revelry has one
curious omission. The lawyers have forgotten the
requirements of Jolter and his comrades in the
way of clothes. Chawchobbs has been snatched
in haste and shirt-sleeves from his beer-shop bar,
and when, in places of fashionable or convivial
town resort, you come upon rough uncouth men
of peasant mien, clad in short smock-frocks,
fustian suits, billicock hats, monumental
ankle-jacks, with rural clay scarce uncaked from them,
and wonderful velveteen waistcoats, with double
rows of mother-o'-pearl buttons, you may be
tolerably certain that a great election petition is
on at Westminster, and that these are witnesses.

It comes to the turn of Giles Jolter to be
examined. 'Tis not much he has to prove. Perhaps
he only overheard the conversation in which the
sitting member offered the head-ostler (who had
a vote) nineteen guineas for a single hair out of
the bay mare's tail; or perhaps he found three
five-pound notes in the corn-chest, with "Vote
for Peverill" on a scrap of paper pinned thereto;
or it may be he was instructed carefully to
waylay, discreetly to kidnap, and completely to fuddle,
Boolwang, the great radical of Chumpsford. As a
rule, the parliamentary committee can make
nothing of Giles Jolter. When he is probed for facts
bearing on the case, he retails in the BÅ“otian
dialect, scraps of local scandal damaging to county
families of the highest standing.

Thus: Rubasore, Q.C. "Do you remember the
thirteenth of June?"

To him Jolter: "Ay, sure-lye, 'twas t' day
Squire Gargoyll laid t' horsewhip 'cross uns
woife's shouthers i' the coach-house."

At a subsequent period of cross-examination,
Serjeant Squallop takes Jolter in hand.

"You say you saw Sir Norman Peverill at
the Red Herring on Horseback. What was he
doing?"

"He wor toight."

"What do you mean, sir?"

"Whoy, droonk, tibby sure." And the