When he resumed his chair there was a burst of applause (Devonshire men are generous with their hands and feet), at the conclusion of which the lecturer, a retired linen-draper from Minehead, stepped forward. Of course his doing so was the signal for another little round of cheering, during which he stood rustling his papers about, edging down his cuffs, and making desperate efforts to appear at his ease, which he most certainly was not. At last he made a start, and in less than five minutes I found myself devoutly wishing that he would look sharp and finish. The land question may be an immensely interesting one--no doubt it is; but when it consists in having long strings of depressing statistics hurled mercilessly at you by a nervous little ex-vendor of calico, who made a point of dropping his h's, you can very soon have enough of it. Before long I saw my father politely stifle a yawn--a piece of delicacy which I, not being upon the platform, did not think it necessary to imitate. The audience behaved admirably. The painful efforts written on the faces of most of them to appear intelligently interested were quite affecting, and at exactly the proper moments they never failed to bring in a little encouraging applause. I'm quite sure there wasn't one of them who understood a word of what the man was saying, but they were evidently charitably inclined to put this down to their own stupidity rather than to the incompetence of the lecturer. He had been droning on for about half-an-hour, when a slight commotion caused by the noisy entrance of some late-comers led me to turn my head. Instantly my spirits rose, for I foresaw a row. The new-comers were all Luccombe men, and between the men of Luccombe and the men of Porlock there existed a deadly enmity. They were rivals in sport and also in politics, for whilst Luccombe boasted a Radical club, Porlock was distinctly Conservative. The arrival of these Luccombites, therefore, was most promising, for they certainly had not come out of compliment to their neighbours, and I took an early opportunity of changing my seat for one nearer the back of the room, so as to be in the fun in case there should be any.