 Beauchamp of the Royal Navy, and the great family of the Earls of
Romfrey, one of the heroes of the war, and the recipient of a Royal Humane
Society's medal for saving life in Bevisham waters, were something more than the
Radical doctor's political son; and, sir, it was to this end, aim, and object,
that I wrote the article I am not ashamed to avow as mine, and I do so, sir,
because of the solitary merit it has of serving your political interests as the
Liberal candidate for Bevisham by counteracting the unpopularity of Dr.
Shrapnel's name, on the one part, and of reviving the credit due to your valour
and high bearing on the field of battle in defence of your country, on the
other, so that Bevisham may apprehend, in spite of party distinctions, that it
has the option, and had better seize upon the honour, of making a M. P. of a
hero.«
    Beauchamp interposed hastily: »Thank you, thank you for the best of
intentions. But let me tell you I am prepared to stand or fall with Dr.
Shrapnel, and be hanged to all that humbug.«
    Timothy rubbed his hands with an abstracted air of washing. »Well,
commander, well, sir, they say a candidate 's to be humoured in his infancy, for
he has to do all the humouring before he 's many weeks old at it; only there 's
the fact! - he soon finds out he has to pay for his first fling, like the son of
a family sowing his oats to reap his Jews. Credit me, sir, I thought it prudent
to counteract a bit of an apothecary's shop odour in the junior Liberal
candidate's address. I found the town sniffing, they scented Shrapnel in the
composition.«
    »Every line of it was mine,« said Beauchamp.
    »Of course it was, and the address was admirably worded, sir, I make bold to
say it to your face; but most indubitably it threatened powerful drugs for weak
stomachs, and it blew cold on votes, which are sensitive plants like nothing
else in botany.«
    »If they are only to be got by abandoning principles, and by anything but
honesty in stating them, they may go,« said Beauchamp.
    »I repeat, my dear sir, I repeat, the infant candidate delights in his
honesty, like the babe in its nakedness, the beautiful virgin in her innocence.
So he does; but he discovers it 's time
