"Anything to oblige you, gentlemen," said he; "but as I am very short-sighted, I deprive myself of the pleasure of a better view of my worthy fellow-citizens."
"Put on your specs, Ag," said Nim Porter—"never mind Flan Sucker!"
"Put on your specs!" cried out the whole of the convention who had nominated the ticket, backed by a number of their friends."
"Blast his eyes!" said Cale Goodfellow, turning to his Tumbledownians, who were all friends of Fog, and of course opposed to the nomination. "Let's have a representative who can see what he is about—none of your goold daylights!"
"Specs or no specs, go it!—Yip!" shouted Flan. Sucker, with a voice that rang like a trumpet.
"Or-der!—Or-der!" said Mr. Handy, rising from his seat and coming forward beside the speaker, and waving his hand to the crowd, greatly concerned to see these manifestations of dissension in the ranks of the party. "Gentlemen, it is but fair that every man should be heard, and the chair takes occasion to say, that it is mortified at these interruptions. If the gentlemen opposed to the nomination—the chair alludes to those who have unfortunately allowed themselves to be influenced by the iron railing, a subject which has nothing upon earth to do with the pending election—if these gentlemen are not disposed to give Mr. Agamemnon Flag an opportunity of delivering himself, the chair would invite such persons to reflect upon the obvious impropriety of such a course. The chair is persuaded that this disturbance results from mere want of reflection, and hopes it shall not be required again to remind gentlemen of the courtesy due to Mr. Flag."
As Virgil describes in that notable passage, the subduing of the rage of popular commotion by Æneas, and likens it to the mandate of Neptune quelling the waves of old ocean, so fell Mr. Handy's timely reproof upon the Anti-iron Railings, and, in a moment, all was still. Agamemnon then began again in his original track.
"I see before me a vast concourse of free citizens—the solid, substantial, durable, permanent, everlasting pillars of free government. The honest, upright, pure, hard-handed, horny-fisted, Democratic yeomanry of the country are here—not the flesh and blood of the country, for that is the pampered aristocracy—but the bone and sinew surround me. It rejoices my eyes to behold these honest, sturdy, independent, intelligent, invincible tillers of the soil—these brawny, unconquerable, liberty-loving working-men—I say, sir, I delight to look upon them; my feeble vision, sir——"
"Put on your specs, Ag!" shouted Ben Inky and Flan Sucker again, at the same instant;—and the cry was echoed from various quarters.
Some moments of disorder again prevailed, which required the second interposition of Mr. Handy, who, in the most spirited manner, proclaimed his positive determination to resign, unless the order of the meeting could be preserved. "I will never consent," said he, with a most laudable energy, "to hold any post, executive or representative, for one moment after I shall have discovered that I do not possess the confidence of the people; the chair must feel itself compelled, by every sentiment which, as a friend of the New-Light Democracy, it holds dear, to resign the moment it finds that it has fallen into a minority." Then followed these remarkable words:—"Sustain me, Quodlibetarians, or let me go!"