 and
source of streams possessed the statistical orator, the reasoning orator, and
the inspired; with others of quality; and yet it had need of an ever-ready
spontaneous imperturbable speaker, whose bubbling generalizations and ability to
beat the drum humorous could swing halls of meeting from the grasp of an enemy,
and then ascend on incalescent adjectives to the popular idea of the sublime. He
was the artistic orator of Corn Law Repeal - the Manchester flood, before which
time Whigs were, since which they have walked like spectral antediluvians, or
floated as dead canine bodies that are sucked away on the ebb of tides and flung
back on the flow, ignorant whether they be progressive or retrograde. Timothy
Turbot assisted in that vast effort. It should have elevated him beyond the
editorship of a country newspaper. Why it did not do so his antagonists
pretended to know, and his friends would smile to hear. The report was that he
worshipped the nymph Whisky.
    Timothy's article had plucked Beauchamp out of bed; Beauchamp's card in
return did the same for him.
    »Commander Beauchamp? I am heartily glad to make your acquaintance, sir;
I've been absent, at work, on the big business we have in common, I rejoice to
say, and am behind my fellow townsmen in this pleasure: and lucky I slept here
in my room above, where I don't often sleep, for the row of the machinery - it
's like a steamer that won't go, though it 's always starting ye,« Mr. Timothy
said in a single breath, upon entering the back office of the Gazette, like unto
those accomplished violinists who can hold on the bow to finger an incredible
number of notes, and may be imaged as representing slow paternal Time, that
rolls his capering dot-headed generation of mortals over the wheel, hundreds to
the minute. »You 'll excuse my not shaving, sir, to come down to your summons
without an extra touch to the neck-band.«
    Beauchamp beheld a middle-sized round man, with loose lips and pendant
indigo jowl, whose eyes twinkled watery, like pebbles under the shore-wash, and
whose neck-band needed an extra touch from fingers other than his own.
    »I am sorry to have disturbed you so early,« he replied.
    »Not a bit, Commander Beauchamp, not a bit, sir. Early or late, and ay ready
- with the Napiers; I 'll wash, I 'll wash.«
    »I came to speak to you of this
