'Suc-cess to the mayor!' cried the voice, 'and may he never desert the

nail and sarspan business, as he got his money by.'

This allusion to the professional pursuits of the orator was received

with a storm of delight, which, with a bell-accompaniment, rendered

the remainder of his speech inaudible, with the exception of the

concluding sentence, in which he thanked the meeting for the patient

attention with which they heard him throughout - an expression of

gratitude which elicited another burst of mirth, of about a quarter of

an hour's duration.

Next, a tall, thin gentleman, in a very stiff white neckerchief, after

being repeatedly desired by the crowd to 'send a boy home, to ask

whether he hadn't left his voice under the pillow,' begged to nominate

a fit and proper person to represent them in Parliament. And when he

said it was Horatio Fizkin, Esquire, of Fizkin Lodge, near Eatanswill,

the Fizkinites applauded, and the Slumkeyites groaned, so long, and

so loudly, that both he and the seconder might have sung comic songs

in lieu of speaking, without anybody's being a bit the wiser.

The friends of Horatio Fizkin, Esquire, having had their innings, a

little choleric, pink-faced man stood forward to propose another fit

and proper person to represent the electors of Eatanswill in

Parliament; and very swimmingly the pink-faced gentleman would

have got on, if he had not been rather too choleric to entertain a

sufficient perception of the fun of the crowd. But after a very few

sentences of figurative eloquence, the pink-faced gentleman got from

denouncing those who interrupted him in the mob, to exchanging

defiances with the gentlemen on the hustings; whereupon arose an

uproar which reduced him to the necessity of expressing his feelings

by serious pantomime, which he did, and then left the stage to his

seconder, who delivered a written speech of half an hour's length, and

wouldn't be stopped, because he had sent it all to the Eatanswill

GAZETTE, and the Eatanswill GAZETTE had already printed it, every

word.

Then Horatio Fizkin, Esquire, of Fizkin Lodge, near Eatanswill,

presented himself for the purpose of addressing the electors; which he

no sooner did, than the band employed by the Honourable Samuel

Slumkey, commenced performing with a power to which their strength

in the morning was a trifle; in return for which, the Buff crowd

belaboured the heads and shoulders of the Blue crowd; on which the

Blue crowd endeavoured to dispossess themselves of their very

unpleasant neighbours the Buff crowd; and a scene of struggling, and

pushing, and fighting, succeeded, to which we can no more do justice

than the mayor could, although he issued imperative orders to twelve

constables to seize the ringleaders, who might amount in number to

two hundred and fifty, or thereabouts. At all these encounters, Horatio

The Pickwick Papers