(Half to himself)
As though they had the Ark of the Covenant.
Ralph Ardsley.
If any one had said to me last week
That that despondent crowd of shabby men,
After six weeks of battle against odds,
And beaten into silence, starved and cold,
Had in them the capacity for this—
Who was it said we're always in a flux,
That nothing's fixed? We don't know anything.
It's like a case of type; to-day it spells
Egerton and to-morrow M-o-b.
To think of Donald Egerton at bay!
Egad!
Bishop Hardbrooke.
These shouts once rose about the Church,
But somehow we don't hear them any more.
Don't think for a moment, Bishop, that you're alone.
We never had the tumult and the shout
That you had in old days, but it's all the same.
The 'Power of the Press'! It makes me laugh.
If I could find a little farm somewhere,
I'd sell my stock to Egerton and get out
And let the world go hang. I'm tired of it.
(Cheers outside)
Yes, there's a ring about it you don't hear
Even in Conventions.