"I shall have a good audience, at any rate. I like this, now--

this kind of public made up of one's own neighbors, you know."
The weavers and tanners of Middlemarch, unlike Mr. Mawmsey, had never

thought of Mr. Brooke as a neighbor, and were not more attached
to him than if he had been sent in a box from London. But they

listened without much disturbance to the speakers who introduced
the candidate, one of them--a political personage from Brassing,

who came to tell Middlemarch its duty--spoke so fully, that it was
alarming to think what the candidate could find to say after him.

Meanwhile the crowd became denser, and as the political personage
neared the end of his speech, Mr. Brooke felt a remarkable change

in his sensations while he still handled his eye-glass, trifled
with documents before him, and exchanged remarks with his committee,

as a man to whom the moment of summons was indifferent.
"I'll take another glass of sherry, Ladislaw," he said, with an

easy air, to Will, who was close behind him, and presently handed
him the supposed fortifier. It was ill-chosen; for Mr. Brooke

was an abstemious man, and to drink a second glass of sherry
quickly at no great interval from the first was a surprise

to his system which tended to scatter his energies instead of
collecting them Pray pity him: so many English gentlemen make

themselves miserable by speechifying on entirely private grounds!
whereas Mr. Brooke wished to serve his country by standing

for Parliament--which, indeed, may also be done on private grounds,
but being once undertaken does absolutely demand some speechifying.

It was not about the beginning of his speech that Mr. Brooke was at
all anxious; this, he felt sure, would be all right; he should have

it quite pat, cut out as neatly as a set of couplets from Pope.
Embarking would be easy, but the vision of open sea that might

come after was alarming. "And questions, now," hinted the demon
just waking up in his stomach, "somebody may put questions

about the schedules.--Ladislaw," he continued, aloud, "just hand
me the memorandum of the schedules."

When Mr. Brooke presented himself on the balcony, the cheers were
quite loud enough to counterbalance the yells, groans, brayings,

and other expressions of adverse theory, which were so moderate that
Mr. Standish (decidedly an old bird) observed in the ear next to him,

"This looks dangerous, by God! Hawley has got some deeper plan
than this." Still, the cheers were exhilarating, and no candidate

could look more amiable than Mr. Brooke, with the memorandum
in his breast-pocket, his left hand on the rail of the balcony,

and his right trifling with his eye-glass. The striking points
in his appearance were his buff waistcoat, short-clipped blond hair,

and neutral physiognomy. He began with some confidence.
"Gentlemen--Electors of Middlemarch!"

This was so much the right thing that a little pause after it
seemed natural.

"I'm uncommonly glad to be here--I was never so proud and happy
in my life--never so happy, you know."

This was a bold figure of speech, but not exactly the right thing;
for, unhappily, the pat opening had slipped away--even couplets

from Pope may be but "fallings from us, vanishings," when fear
clutches us, and a glass of sherry is hurrying like smoke among

our ideas. Ladislaw, who stood at the window behind the speaker,
thought, "it's all up now. The only chance is that, since the best

thing won't always do, floundering may answer for once." Mr. Brooke,
meanwhile, having lost other clews, fell back on himself and his

qualifications--always an appropriategraceful subject for a candidate.
"I am a close neighbor of yours, my good friends--you've known

me on the bench a good while--I've always gone a good deal into
public questions--machinery, now, and machine-breaking--you're many

of you concerned with machinery, and I've been going into that lately.
It won't do, you know, breaking machines: everything must go on--

trade, manufactures, commerce, interchange of staples--that kind
of thing--since Adam Smith, that must go on. We must look all over

the globe:--`Observation with extensive view,' must look everywhere,
`from China to Peru,' as somebody says--Johnson, I think, `The Rambler,'

you know. That is what I have done up to a certain point--not as far
as Peru; but I've not always stayed at home--I saw it wouldn't do.

I've been in the Levant, where some of your Middlemarch goods go--
and then, again, in the Baltic. The Baltic, now."

Plying among his recollections in this way, Mr. Brooke might have
got along, easily to himself, and would have come back from the

remotest seas without trouble; but a diabolical procedure had been set
up by the enemy. At one and the same moment there had risen above

the shoulders of the crowd, nearly opposite Mr. Brooke, and within
ten yards of him, the effigy of himself: buff-colored waistcoat,

eye-glass, and neutral physiognomy, painted on rag; and there
had arisen, apparently in the air, like the note of the cuckoo,

a parrot-like, Punch-voiced echo of his words. Everybody looked
up at the open windows in the houses at the opposite angles

of the converging streets; but they were either blank, or filled
by laughing listeners. The most innocent echo has an impish mockery

in it when it follows a gravelypersistentspeaker, and this echo
was not at all innocent; if it did not follow with the precision

of a natural echo, it had a wicked choice of the words it overtook.
By the time it said, "The Baltic, now," the laugh which had been

running through the audience became a general shout, and but for
the sobering effects of party and that great public cause which

the entanglement of things had identified with "Brooke of Tipton,"
the laugh might have caught his committee. Mr. Bulstrode asked,

reprehensively, what the new police was doing; but a voice could not
well be collared, and an attack on the effigy of the candidate would

have been too equivocal, since Hawley probably meant it to be pelted.
Mr. Brooke himself was not in a position to be quickly conscious

of anything except a general slipping away of ideas within himself:
he had even a little singing in the ears, and he was the only person

who had not yet taken distinctaccount of the echo or discerned the
image of himself. Few things hold the perceptions more thoroughly

captive than anxiety about what we have got to say. Mr. Brooke heard
the laughter; but he had expected some Tory efforts at disturbance,

and he was at this moment additionally excited by the tickling,
stinging sense that his lost exordium was coming back to fetch him

from the Baltic.
"That reminds me," he went on, thrusting a hand into his side-pocket,

with an easy air, "if I wanted a precedent, you know--but we never want
a precedent for the right thing--but there is Chatham, now; I can't

say I should have supported Chatham, or Pitt, the younger Pitt--
he was not a man of ideas, and we want ideas, you know."

"Blast your ideas! we want the Bill," said a loud rough voice
from the crowd below.

Immediately the visible" target="_blank" title="a.看不见的；无形的">invisible Punch, who had hitherto followed
Mr. Brooke, repeated, "Blast your ideas! we want the Bill."

The laugh was louder than ever, and for the first time Mr. Brooke
being himself silent, heard distinctly the mocking echo. But it

seemed to ridicule his interrupter, and in that light was encouraging;
so he replied with amenity--

"There is something in what you say, my good friend, and what do we
meet for but to speak our minds--freedom of opinion, freedom of

the press, liberty--that kind of thing? The Bill, now--you shall have
the Bill"--here Mr. Brooke paused a moment to fix on his eye-glass

and take the paper from his breast-pocket, with a sense of being
practical and coming to particulars. The visible" target="_blank" title="a.看不见的；无形的">invisible Punch followed:--

"You shall have the Bill, Mr. Brooke, per electioneering contest,
and a seat outside Parliament as delivered, five thousand pounds,

seven shillings, and fourpence."
Mr. Brooke, amid the roars of laughter, turned red, let his eye-glass

fall, and looking about him confusedly, saw the image of himself,
which had come nearer. The next moment he saw it dolorously

bespattered with eggs. His spirit rose a little, and his voice too.
"Buffoonery, tricks, ridicule the test of truth--all that is very