these reports were at the time well-founded, or not, certain it is
that Mrs. Tulrumble very shortly afterwards started a four-wheel
chaise, driven by a tall postilion in a yellow cap,--that Mr.
Tulrumble junior took to smoking cigars, and calling the footman a
'feller,'--and that Mr. Tulrumble from that time forth, was no more
seen in his old seat in the chimney-corner of the Lighterman's Arms
at night. This looked bad; but, more than this, it began to be
observed that Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble attended the corporation
meetings more frequently than heretofore; and he no longer went to
sleep as he had done for so many years, but propped his eyelids
open with his two forefingers; that he read the newspapers by
himself at home; and that he was in the habit of indulging abroad
in distant and mysterious allusions to 'masses of people,' and 'the
property of the country,' and 'productive power,' and 'the monied
interest:' all of which denoted and proved that Nicholas Tulrumble
was either mad, or worse; and it puzzled the good people of Mudfog
amazingly.

At length, about the middle of the month of October, Mr. Tulrumble
and family went up to London; the middle of October being, as Mrs.
Tulrumble informed her acquaintance in Mudfog, the very height of
the fashionable season.

Somehow or other, just about this time, despite the health-
preserving air of Mudfog, the Mayor died. It was a most
extraordinary circumstance; he had lived in Mudfog for eighty-five
years. The corporation didn't understand it at all; indeed it was
with great difficulty that one old gentleman, who was a great
stickler for forms, was dissuaded from proposing a vote of censure
on such unaccountable conduct. Strange as it was, however, die he