Nobody could talk to anybody, because he held forth to everybody at once, as if the company had no individual existence, but were a Meeting.

He impounded the Reverend Mr.Septimus, as an official personage to be addressed, or kind of human peg to hang his oratorical hat on, and fell into the exasperating habit, common among such orators, of impersonating him as a wicked and weak opponent.

Thus, he would ask: 'And will you, sir, now stultify yourself by telling me'-- and so forth, when the innocent man had not opened his lips, nor meant to open them.
Or he would say: 'Now see, sir, to what a position you are reduced.

I will leave you no escape.

After exhausting all the resources of fraud and falsehood, during years upon years; after exhibiting a combination of dastardly meanness with ensanguined daring, such as the world has not often witnessed; you have now the hypocrisy to bend the knee before the most degraded of mankind, and to sue and whine and howl for mercy!' Whereat the unfortunate Minor Canon would look, in part indignant and in part perplexed; while his worthy mother sat bridling, with tears in her eyes, and the remainder of the party lapsed into a sort of gelatinous state, in which there was no flavour or solidity, and very little resistance.
But the gush of philanthropy that burst forth when the departure of Mr.
Honeythunder began to impend, must have been highly gratifying to the feelings of that distinguished man.