preaching!

Ah! kind Lord, for a special providence now! The men of his own
nation--men from the land of the open English Bible and temperance cup
and song are cheering him on to mad disgrace. And now another call for
the appointed sport is drowned by the flat-boatmen singing the ancient
tune of Mear. You can hear the words--

"Old Grimes is dead, that good old soul"

--from ribald lips and throats turned brazen with laughter, from singers
who toss their hats aloft and roll in their seats; the chorus swells to
the accompaniment of a thousand brogans--

"He used to wear an old gray coat
All buttoned down before."

A ribboned man in the arena is trying to be heard, and the Latins raise
one mighty cry for silence. The big red man gets a hand over the
parson's mouth, and the ribboned man seizes his moment.

"They have been endeavoring for hours," he says, "to draw the terrible
animals from their dens, but such is their strength and fierceness,
that"--

His voice is drowned. Enough has been heard to warrant the inference
that the beasts cannot be whipped out of the storm-drenched cages to
which menagerie-life and long starvation have attached them, and from
the roar of indignation the man of ribbons flies. The noise increases.
Men are standing up by hundreds, and women are imploring to be let out