Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/131

1868.] Now I put it candidly to an intelligent and fair-minded public, whether all such bores as this fellow shouldn't be either muzzled or beheaded. They go up and down, and about the highways and byways of social life, seeking whom they may devour, and terror waits upon their heels. Those who are well informed of the habits of this beast of prey, will fly incontinently from his presence; but the unsuspicious stranger becomes his ready game. He makes himself thoroughly hated and detested of all men, women, and children; and the more he is hated, the more he plies his auger. I shudder at the bare recollection of the times that my patience has been ravaged, my time dissipated, my nerves agonized, and my temper soured, by the merciless onslaughts of these harpies! I think I have listened to the whistling of minie balls and the screeching of shells in the front of a battle, with more composure than I have endured the filling of my ears by these conceited donkeys with commonplace talk on things which they don't understand—and I do.

Reader—a timid, but honest word in your ear. Do you ever talk just for the sake of keeping yourself before the public, when you can see that the public is worried by you, and wants to be let alone? If yea, be warned, for no people outside State's prison are hated more cordially and justly than the Bigaugers.

HOUGH Mr. Richard J. Hinton gave his impressions of the great English political reformer and popular leader, in a very pleasant article in of a few months back, perhaps he did not entirely exhaust the interest in the subject; certainly he did not exhaust the subject itself. A great man is many-sided, and variously affects different observers. Mine is a woman's view of John Bright.

First, as to his appearance. He is broad-shouldered and stout, but not tall. His well-proportioned frame indicates physical strength and endurance in a remarkable degree. He must be over forty years of age, yet he possesses a complexion of the rare purity and texture of girlhood, rather than of mature manhood. His forehead is so high and wide that it would amount to a defect were it not softened by an abundance of silky, dark-brown hair. The rest of his features are not noticeable for beauty or regularity, and but for the wonderful decision of the firm jaw and determined mouth would give little indication of the vast intellectual power of this celebrated man. John Bright's face is not very mobile, but is characterized by calmness and resolution, instead of varying expression.

That he is thoroughly the conventional type of Englishman the following incident will show:

A very good portrait of him was standing in the studio of an artist. Some Americans came in, and catching sight of the picture without knowing the original, exclaimed:

"Oh! that's John Bull."

"No, it's John Bright," quietly replied the painter.