"Not a county newspaper to advocate the rights of--" here my uncle stopped, as if at a loss, and whispered in my ear, "What are his politics?" "Don't know," answered I. Uncle Jack intuitively took down from his memory the phrase most readily at hand, and added, with a nasal intonation, "the rights of our distressed fellow-creatures!" My father scratched his eyebrow with his forefinger, as he was apt to do when doubtful; the rest of the company--a silent set--looked up. "Fellow-creatures!" said Mr Rollick--"fellow-fiddlesticks!" Uncle Jack was clearly in the wrong box. He drew out of it cautiously--"I mean," said he, "our _respectable_ fellow-creatures;" and then suddenly it occurred to him that a "County Mercury" would naturally represent the agricultural interest, and that if Mr Rollick said that the "County Mercury ought to be hanged," he was one of those politicians who had already begun to call the agricultural interest "a Vampire." Flushed with that fancied discovery, Uncle Jack rushed on, intending to bear along with the stream, thus fortunately directed, all the "rubbish"[1] subsequently shot into Covent Garden and the Hall of Commerce. [1] "We talked sad rubbish when we first began," says Mr Cobden in one of his speeches. "Yes, respectable fellow-creatures, men of capital and enterprise! For what are these country squires compared to our wealthy merchants? What is this agricultural interest that professes to be the prop of the land?" "Professes!" cried Squire Rollick, "It is the prop of the land, and as for those manufacturing fellows who have bought up the Mercury--"