BULLER.
The Spirit of the Age! The Age should be ashamed of herself for living from hand to mouth on Periodical Literature. The old Lady should indeed, sir. If the Pensive Public conceits herself to be the Thinking World—
NORTH.
Let us help to make her so. I have a decent little Library of some three hundred select volumes in the Van—my Plate-chest—and a few dozens of choice wines for my friends—of Champagne, which you, Buller, call small beer——
BULLER.
I retracted and apologised. Is that the key of the Van at your watch-chain?
NORTH.
It is. So many hundred people about the Encampment—sometimes among them suspicious strangers in paletots in search of the picturesque, and perhaps the pecuniary—that it is well to intrust the key to my own body-guard. It does not weigh an ounce. And that lock is not to be picked by the ghost of Huffey White.
SEWARD.
But of the volume in hand, sir?