It was a burden to kill any man, and he
was not going to kill himself,--at any rate without the reward for
which he had been working all his life, and to which he was fully
entitled, namely, a seat in the Cabinet. Now there were Bonteenites
in those days as well as Phineas Finnites. The latter tribe was for
the most part feminine; but the former consisted of some half-dozen
members of Parliament, who thought they saw their way in encouraging
the forlorn hope of the unhappy financier.
A leader of a party is nothing without an organ, and an organ came
forward to support Mr. Bonteen,--not very creditable to him as a
Liberal, being a Conservative organ,--but not the less gratifying to
his spirit, inasmuch as the organ not only supported him, but exerted
its very loudest pipes in abusing the man whom of all men he hated
the most. The _People's Banner_ was the organ, and Mr. Quintus Slide
was, of course, the organist. The following was one of the tunes he
played, and was supposed by himself to be a second thunderbolt, and
probably a conclusively crushing missile.
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