“My friends,” says he, “I remember a duty unfulfilled yesterday.  It is right that I should be chastened in some penalty.  I ought not to murmur.  Rachael, pay the eightpence!”

While Mrs. Snagsby, drawing her breath, looks hard at Mr. Snagsby, as who should say, “You hear this apostle!” and while Mr. Chadband glows with humility and train oil, Mrs. Chadband pays the money.  It is Mr. Chadband’s habit—­it is the head and front of his pretensions indeed—­to keep this sort of debtor and creditor account in the smallest items and to post it publicly on the most trivial occasions.

“My friends,” says Chadband, “eightpence is not much; it might justly have been one and fourpence; it might justly have been half a crown.  O let us be joyful, joyful!  O let us be joyful!”

With which remark, which appears from its sound to be an extract in verse, Mr. Chadband stalks to the table, and before taking a chair, lifts up his admonitory hand.

“My friends,” says he, “what is this which we now behold as being spread before us?  Refreshment.  Do we need refreshment then, my friends?  We do.  And why do we need refreshment, my friends?  Because we are but mortal, because we are but sinful, because we are but of the earth, because we are not of the air.  Can we fly, my friends?  We cannot.  Why can we not fly, my friends?”

Mr. Snagsby, presuming on the success of his last point, ventures to observe in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, “No wings.”  But is immediately frowned down by Mrs. Snagsby.

“I say, my friends,” pursues Mr. Chadband, utterly rejecting and obliterating Mr. Snagsby’s suggestion, “why can we not fly?  Is it because we are calculated to walk?  It is.  Could we walk, my friends, without strength?  We could not.  What should we do without strength, my friends?  Our legs would refuse to bear us, our knees would double up, our ankles would turn over, and we should come to the ground.  Then from whence, my friends, in a human point of view, do we derive the strength that is necessary to our limbs?  Is it,” says Chadband, glancing over the table, “from bread in various forms, from butter which is churned from the milk which is yielded unto us by the cow, from the eggs which are laid by the fowl, from ham, from tongue, from sausage, and from such like?  It is.  Then let us partake of the good things which are set before us!”

The persecutors denied that there was any particular gift in Mr. Chadband’s piling verbose flights of stairs, one upon another, after this fashion.  But this can only be received as a proof of their determination to persecute, since it must be within everybody’s experience that the Chadband style of oratory is widely received and much admired.