And each speaker was evidently less concerned to impress his friends than his enemies.
But any one who had chanced to stand on the ridge above, half-way between the two parties, would have heard a medley somewhat of the following kind,-- "Gentlemen, in addressing you on the subject of remains--" "-- I need hardly explain what we mean when we speak of beauty--" "-- Remains are things dug up out of the earth where they--" "-- make a great mistake in calling things people eat, beautiful.

In fact--" "very few of them are to be found unless you know where they are, but--" "When we talk of a beautiful face we mean a face that is--" "-- plastered over with mud and grime, and hardly recognisable till it is scraped clean, or--" "people differ very much about it--what one person thinks beautiful, another--" "generally digs for with spades and shovels, and may spend days--" "-- trying to look less ugly than they really are--" "-- some people find this quite impossible and have to employ persons to--" "make personal remarks about their neighbours--" "gentlemen,--" "I need not remind you that among the Urbans--" "are to be found some of the most hideous types of ugliness imaginable-- what we need is--" "-- a little common sense to enable us to tell the difference between shams--" "-- like ourselves and the baboons, which is not always easy.

In conclusion, gentlemen, I beg to point to our--" "-- dirty hands and faces, which no one who is really interested in hunting for remains of his native--" "-- ugliness ought to be ashamed of." And so on.
We were too busy cheering our own orator and listening to the enemy's to take in the full humour of the medley at the time.

The opening speeches were evidently prepared beforehand (a good part of them possibly copied bodily out of some book).

But, as soon as the chairman on either side declared the subject open for discussion, the interest thickened.
Flitwick led off on "Remains," whereas it fell to my lot to reply on "Beauty." By a little sharp practice, I got the lead, which, as it happened, turned out more to the enemy's profit than my own.
"Gentlemen," shouted I, for the breeze made it necessary to speak out, "I beg to disagree with all that the last speaker has said." "Gentlemen," came the answering voice of Flitwick, "in consequence of a donkey braying somewhere near, I fear I shall find it difficult to make myself heard." "When people have nothing to say," continued I, "the less they try to say the better." "I will not imitate the idiots who call themselves Philosophers, and yet don't know what gender a simple Latin word like _corpore_ is." "It is sad to think how many afflicted ones there are, close to us, who cannot possibly be as big fools as they look, or look as big fools as they are." "The one kind of remains you can't find are the remains of a Philosopher's lunch.