‘Gentlemen, pray give Mr. Wentworth a fair hearing,’ cried the chairman, and again the storm grew and the confusion increased. ‘Order! order!’ said the chairman, screaming at the top of his voice. He might just as well have spoken to the winds or waves. Then he grew angry and began to threaten, and that only made matters worse. Wentworth, erect as a statue and with folded arms, calmly surveyed the scene. It was not a pleasant sight; it suggests to one the truth of the Darwinian origin of the human race. In a crowd men act like monkeys. I remember as a boy sneaking into an election crowd and calling a decent, respectable, white-haired old baronet, who had been the Tory representative of the county for a quarter of a century, and whom every decent body respected, the old Benacre Bull (Benacre being the name of the village in which he lived); and everyone repeated the nickname till the old gentleman had to stop speaking, and I have been ashamed of the thing ever since. Had the individual members of that howling mob met the Baronet in the street as he rode by on his favourite chestnut mare, there was not one of them but would have treated him with every appearance of courtesy and respect. There is something very cowardly in an election mob. Long did the storm roar and rage as Wentworth stood up, the true friend and earnest champion of his rough and unmannerly audience. The chairman in vain appealed for fair play. That was the last thing to be expected at such a time; in vain he addressed them as gentlemen, or friends, or electors, still the storm raged. However, Wentworth was not a man to be put down, and he resolutely maintained his ground.