I kicked Harry Welstone beneath the table as a signal to join in, but he maintained a grim, stolid silence. He told me subsequently that it wasn’t to be done at any price.
“You may not possibly have heard Mr. Disraeli’s last, gentlemen,” said Mr. Hawthorne, placing his left hand inside his waistcoat and flourishing the right in my direction. “It’s—ha! ha!—so very like Dizzy that—ha! ha!—I cannot help repeating it.” Here he laughed “consumedly” for fully a minute.
The reader is possibly acquainted with some one man who cozens time by inward chuckles at his own conceits. It is a melancholy ordeal to have to endure this individual, to reflect back his dulness, and to return smile for smile. All bores are terrors, but the worst class of bore is the political; he is the embodiment, the concentrated essence, the amalgam and epitome of bores. He mounts his dreary Rosinante, and jogs along, taking acts of Parliament for milestones and the dullest utterances in the lives of eminent men as his halting-places, quoting long-winded, meaningless speeches as epigrams, and paralyzing his auditory with wooden extracts from a blue-book of exploded theories. His pertinacity is as inexhaustible as it is undaunted; he is free from the faintest suspicion of self-distrust; he is a bore within a bore. Of course, as the father of Mabel, Mr. Hawthorne interested me, and I listened with a reverence that begat the reputation of a shrewd, sensible fellow—an encomium never heretofore passed upon me under any circumstance whatsoever.
“The Right Honorable the senior member for the city of Dublin,” commenced Mr. Hawthorne, after his merriment had cooled off a little, “is—ha! ha!—a Mr. Jonathan Pim, Quaker, and a laborious statistician. The House likes a statistician on the budget or in committee, but we will not have him in debate—no, gentlemen, we will not tolerate him in debate. A question arose in which I had fruitlessly endeavored to catch the Speaker’s eye—the Speaker is, by the bye, no particular friend of mine, as I once overruled his decision on a point of order; consequently, I seldom get an opportunity of speaking, and am compelled to write to the Times. Well, gentlemen, as I was observing, a question came up in which the Right Honorable the senior member for the city of Dublin felt himself interested, and he made a very creditable speech, bristling with figures—quite a surprise to some of us; but it bored us, gentlemen, and the House will not tolerate a bore.”
Harry trod upon my toe; my boots were tight—I involuntarily groaned.
“I perceive that you agree with me,” said the M.P.; “the affliction is terrible.”
“Awful!” said Harry, peeling a plum.
“Well, gentlemen, the Right Honorable gentleman, the senior member for the city of Dublin, had—ha! ha!—just concluded his speech, when Mr. Disraeli, who sat upon the Opposition benches, said to the honorable member for Shrewsbury, who sat behind him, and placing his eyeglass up so”—suiting the action to the word—
“‘Who is this person?’
“‘Mr. Pim, sir, the senior member for the city of Dublin,’ responded the honorable member for Shrewsbury.