Little more worth remembering occurred during the play, at the end of which Jones asked him, "Which of the players he had liked best?" To this he answered, with some appearance of indignation at the question, "The king, without doubt." "Indeed, Mr. Partridge," says Mrs. Miller, "you are not of the same opinion with the town; for they are all agreed that Hamlet is acted by the best player who ever was on the stage." "He the best player!" cries Partridge, with a contemptuous sneer, "why, I could act as well as he himself. I am sure, if I had seen a ghost, I should have looked in the very same manner, and done just as he did. And then, to be sure, in that scene, as you called it, between him and his mother, where you told me he acted so fine, why, Lord help me, any man, that is, any good man, that had such a mother, would have done exactly the same. I know you are only joking with me; but indeed, madam, tho I was never to a play in London, yet I have seen acting before in the country; and the king for my money; he speaks all his words distinctly, half as loud again as the other. Anybody may see he is an actor." III MR. ADAMS IN A POLITICAL LIGHT[21] "I do assure you, sir," says he, taking the gentleman by the hand, "I am heartily glad to meet with a man of your kidney; for, tho I am a poor parson, I will be bold to say I am an honest man, and would not do an ill thing to be made a bishop; nay, tho it hath not fallen in my way to offer so noble a sacrifice, I have not been without opportunities of suffering for the sake of my conscience, I thank heaven for them; for I have had relations, tho I say it, who made some figure in the world, particularly a nephew, who was a shopkeeper and an alderman of a corporation. He was a good lad, and was under my care when a boy, and I believe would do what I bade him to his dying day. "Indeed, it looks like extreme vanity in me to affect being a man of such consequence as to have so great an interest in an alderman; but others have thought so too, as manifestly appeared by the rector whose curate I formerly was sending for me on the approach of an election, and telling me if I expected to continue in his cure that I must bring my nephew to vote for one Colonel Courtly, a gentleman whom I had never heard tidings of till that instant. I told the rector I had no power over my nephew's vote (God forgive me for such prevarication!); that I supposed he would give it according to his conscience; that I would by no means endeavor to influence him to give it otherwise. He told me it was in vain to equivocate; that he knew I had already spoke to him in favor of Squire Fickle, my neighbor; and indeed it was true I had; for it was at a season when the church was in danger, and when all good men expected they knew not what would happen to us all. I then answered boldly, if he thought I had given my promise he affronted me in proposing any breach of it.