may I so employ this instrument as to use it toe your
advantage, toe your profit, toe your gain, toe your welfare, toe your
enrichment! My young friend, sit upon this stool.«
    Jo, apparently possessed by an impression that the reverend gentleman wants
to cut his hair, shields his head with both arms, and is got into the required
position with great difficulty, and every possible manifestation of reluctance.
    When he is at last adjusted like a lay-figure, Mr. Chadband, retiring behind
the table, holds up his bear's-paw, and says, »My friends!« This is the signal
for a general settlement of the audience. The 'prentices giggle internally, and
nudge each other. Guster falls into a staring and vacant state, compounded of a
stunned admiration of Mr. Chadband and pity for the friendless outcast whose
condition touches her nearly. Mrs. Snagsby silently lays trains of gunpowder.
Mrs. Chadband composes herself grimly by the fire, and warms her knees: finding
that sensation favourable to the reception of eloquence.
    It happens that Mr. Chadband has a pulpit habit of fixing some member of his
congregation with his eye, and fatly arguing his points with that particular
person; who is understood to be expected to be moved to an occasional grunt,
groan, gasp, or other audible expression of inward working; which expression of
inward working, being echoed by some elderly lady in the next pew, and so
communicated, like a game of forfeits, through a circle of the more fermentable
sinners present, serves the purpose of parliamentary cheering, and gets Mr.
Chadband's steam up. From mere force of habit, Mr. Chadband in saying »My
friends!« has rested his eye on Mr. Snagsby; and proceeds to make that
ill-starred stationer, already sufficiently confused, the immediate recipient of
his discourse.
    »We have here among us, my friends,« says Chadband, »a Gentile and a
Heathen, a dweller in the tents of Tom-all-Alone's and a mover-on upon the
surface of the earth. We have here among us, my friends,« and Mr. Chadband,
untwisting the point with his dirty thumb-nail, bestows an oily smile on Mr.
Snagsby, signifying that he will throw him an argumentative back-fall presently
if he be not already down, »a brother and a boy. Devoid of parents, devoid of
relations, devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold and silver, and of
precious stones. Now, my friends,