ng received a special
retainer, in the shape of half a quartern of gin, for the occasion;
while in the usher's chair were ensconced two urchins of about fourteen
years of age, smoking tobacco, playing at all fours, and drinking purl,
with their legs diffused in a picturesque attitude along the
writing-desk. One of the justices tried to command silence--till the
Squire's commission to the usher should be read; but no sooner had he
opened his mouth than the whole multitude burst forth as if the
confusion of tongues had taken place for the first time; twenty spoke
together, ten whistled, as many more sang psalms and obscene songs
alternately; the bagpiper droned his worst; the fiddler uttered notes
that made the hair of those who heard them stand on end; while the
hurdygurdy man did his utmost to grind down both his companions, in
which task he was ably assisted by the grinning and chattering of the
honourable and four-footed gentleman on his left. Meantime stones,
tiles, and rafters, pewter pint-pots, fragments of slates, rulers, and
desks, were circulating through the schoolhouse in all directions, in
the most agreeable confusion.

One of the justices tried to speak, but even from the first it was all
dumb show; and scarcely had he proceeded through two sentences, when his
oration was extinguished as suddenly and by the same means as the
conflagration of the Royal Palace at Lilliput. After many attempts to
obtain a hearing, it became obvious that all chance of doing so in the
schoolhouse was at an end; and so the usher, the justices, and the rest,
adjourned to the next ale-house, where they had the usher's commission
quietly read over in presence of the landlord and the waiter, and handed
him over the keys of the house before the same witnesses; of all which,
and of their previous deforcement by a mob of rapscallions, they took
care to have an instrument regularly drawn out by a notary-public.
Thereafter they ordered a rump and dozen, being confident that as the
day was bitterly cold, and the snow some feet deep upon the ground, the
courage of the rioters would be cooled before they had finished dinner;
and so it was, for towards evening, the temperature having descended
considerably beneath the freezing point, the mob, who had now exhausted
their beer and gin, and who saw that there was no more fun to be
expected for the day, began to disperse each man to his home, so that
before nightfall the coast was clear; on which