A LITTLE LITERARY CONVERSATION.
Quietness was again restored. A group had gathered around the fire, to
amuse themselves with a little chat. Among which was an attorney's
clerk out of place, in the last stage of sottishness and vagrancy; a
drunken mechanic; and a kind of decent itinerant, very pedagogue-like,
an inveterate reader of the _Twopenny Police Dispatch_ (the only paper
the landlord took in), and a stout advocate of the Holy mother church
and Daniel O'Connell, the father of the people, as he styled him. A
few ungentlemanly words were exchanged between this small politician
and a staunch supporter of the English Church; several topics were
descanted upon, among which was the character of Wellington and his
campaigns. A short but lively description was given of the Battle of
Vittoria, by an old soldier in a labourer's dress.
Wellington, it was said, was not the man he was, or else the papers
did not speak the truth; and, certainly, a few glaring facts were
produced that they could, at least at times, make a mistake. This
brought on a discussion about the management of newspapers.
One talkative fellow maintained that one newspaper was but merely a
copy of another; but this assertion was clearly set aside, and the
duties of an Editor and Reporter nicely discriminated, by a very
equivocal sort of a _gemman_, in a great coat, whom we strongly
suspected was somewhat related to the Swell Mob.
[Illustration]