Page:Colymbia (1873).djvu/228

222 from them as actuated by the basest motives, or as endowed with the most infinitesimal portion of intelligence. In fact, those who did not go along with them were held up to public ridicule and contempt, as mere knaves or fools, or a combination of both. They never would allow that an opponent had either honesty or intelligence. But they invariably claimed these attributes for themselves. And yet it was remarkable that, though they denounced their opponents so fiercely in public, they lived with them and associated with them on terms of intimacy and friendship, and behaved to them as courteously in private as they handled them discourteously in public. It seemed to be quite an understood thing, that these public denunciations actually meant nothing, but were to be adopted as mere flowers of rhetoric.

The principal orator of these societies was often presented by his admirers with a testimonial of greater or less value to mark their sense of his labours and eloquence. Such presentations were often the occasion of a special burst of eloquence from the fortunate recipient, in which he eulogized the objects of the society and his own special efforts on its behalf, and loaded his opponents with every epithet of contumely he could devise, to the great delight of his admiring audience.

I was present at several of these presentations, and one in especial I remember, where the favourite orator of the society for the liberation of the tethered seals was presented with a magnificent suite of ornaments for the decoration of his wife. He held forth in something like the following strain, though I am sure my memory does not do justice to his burning eloquence:—