Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/248

 MARK TWAIN

ease in the lips of his trousers pockets; his head is tilted back complacently; he is attitudinizing; he is playing to the gallery. However, they are all doing that. It is curious to see. Men who only vote, and can t make speeches, and don t know how to invent witty ejaculations, wander about the vacated parts of the floor, and stop in a good place and strike attitudes attitudes suggestive of weighty thought, mostly and glance furtively up at the galleries to see how it works ; or a couple will come together and shake hands in an artificial way, and laugh a gay manufactured laugh, and do some constrained and self-conscious attitudinizing; and they steal glances at the galleries to see if they are getting notice. It is like a scene on the stage by-play by minor actors at the back while the stars do the great work at the front. Even Count Badeni attitudinizes for a moment; strikes a reflective Napoleonic attitude of fine picturesqueness but soon thinks better of it and desists. There are two who do not attitudin ize poor harried and insulted President Abraham- owicz, who seems wholly miserable, and can find no way to put in the dreary time but by swinging his bell and by discharging occasional remarks which nobody can hear; and a resigned and patient priest, who sits lonely in a great vacancy on Majority territory and munches an apple.

Schonerer uplifts his fog-horn of a voice and shakes the roof with an insult discharged at the Majority.

Dr. Lueger. &quot;The Honorless Party would better keep still here!&quot;

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