, sir,« replied the plump old gentleman.
    »Give me your hand, my worthy friend,« said Mr. Gregsbury. »Pugstyles, my
dear friend, I am very sorry to see you here.«
    »I am very sorry to be here, sir,« said Mr. Pugstyles; »but your conduct,
Mr. Gregsbury, has rendered this deputation from your constituents imperatively
necessary.«
    »My conduct, Pugstyles,« said Mr. Gregsbury, looking round upon the
deputation with gracious magnanimity - »My conduct has been, and ever will be,
regulated by a sincere regard for the true and real interests of this great and
happy country. Whether I look at home, or abroad; whether I behold the peaceful
industrious communities of our island home: her rivers covered with steamboats,
her roads with locomotives, her streets with cabs, her skies with balloons of a
power and magnitude hitherto unknown in the history of aëronautics in this or
any other nation - I say, whether I look merely at home, or, stretching my eyes
farther, contemplate the boundless prospect of conquest and possession -
achieved by British perseverance and British valour - which is outspread before
me, I clasp my hands, and turning my eyes to the broad expanse above my head,
exclaim, Thank Heaven, I am a Briton!«
    The time had been when this burst of enthusiasm would have been cheered to
the very echo; but now, the deputation received it with chilling coldness. The
general impression seemed to be, that as an explanation of Mr. Gregsbury's
political conduct it did not enter quite enough into detail; and one gentleman
in the rear did not scruple to remark aloud, that, for his purpose, it savoured
rather too much of a gammon tendency.
    »The meaning of that term - gammon,« said Mr. Gregsbury, »is unknown to me.
If it means that I grow a little too fervid, or perhaps even hyperbolical, in
extolling my native land, I admit the full justice of the remark. I am proud of
this free and happy country. My form dilates, my eye glistens, my breast heaves,
my heart swells, my bosom burns, when I call to mind her greatness and her
glory.«
    »We wish, sir,« remarked Mr. Pugstyles, calmly, »to ask you a few
questions.«
    »If you please, gentlemen; my time is yours - and my country's - and my
country's -« said Mr. Gregsbury.
    This permission being conceded, Mr. Pugstyles put
