Now, I need not have told that little story--which repeats itself among such people, more often than it is repeated--except to explain what it was that took us, in the summer holidays, to a place called "Happystowe-on-Sea." It appears that my father was by no means satisfied so to lose his hats--though in truth it was no great grievance, thus to save the contents at the cost of the case--and like a thorough Briton, as he always was, he determined not to get the worst of it. Several opportunities for reprisal had been allowed to escape him; when, soon after Bill Chumps went to Oxford, there came among us, and excited our principles, a contested election for Marylebone. By means of their noble organization, the Liberals knew, from the outset, that the battle of freedom was sure to be won; or, as our people put it, rank bribery and corruption, truckling and swilling would defeat the right. Nevertheless, a just hope was entertained, on both sides, of a very lively contest, and a fair occasion (without legal intervention) for sounding the capacity of an adversary's head. My father was flying a big blue flag, which we could see from the _Partheneion_, with "Church and State for ever" on it; and Mr. John Windsor, and Chumps Esquire--as we called the great butcher in respect of his son--and "_The Best End of the Scrag_," all had the same; and only a man who knocked horses on the head durst hang out the red rag, up our Lane. I speak of this, only as a circumstance to prove that our neighbourhood was Constitutional, and that the Radical element, however respectable it might have been when kept at home, had no right whatever to come invading us, and desiring to trample on our principles. They knew that for nearly three hundred and fifty yards, the inhabitants were all true-Blue, beginning with the Indigo factory on the South, and going all through the ash-heaps, and ending with my father. But in the wantonness of triumph, when their majority was posted up 2,000 [though our side claimed 1,500 in front] these "Demi-Cats"--as Bill had sent us word from Oxford to entitle them, and so we did--must needs assemble at King's Cross, in their thousands, and resolve to storm every Blue house in Maiden Lane.