The politician by whom they were compiled picked up
his intelligence at coffee-houses, and often pleaded for an additional
gratuity, in consideration of the extra expense attached to frequenting
such places of fashionable resort.] For it may be observed in passing,
that instead of those mail-coaches, by means of which every mechanic at
his sixpenny club may nightly learn from twenty contradictory channels
the yesterday's news of the capital, a weekly post brought, in those
days, to Waverley-Honour, a WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER, which, after it had
gratified Sir Everard's curiosity, his sister's, and that of his aged
butler, was regularly transferred from the Hall to the Rectory, from
the Rectory to Squire Stubbs' at the Grange, from the Squire to the
Baronet's steward at his neat white house on the heath, from the steward
to the bailiff, and from him through a huge circle of honest dames and
gaffers, by whose hard and horny hands it was generally worn to pieces
in about a month after its arrival.
This slow succession of intelligence was of some advantage to Richard
Waverley in the case before us; for, had the sum total of his enormities
reached the ears of Sir Everard at once, there can be no doubt that the
new commissioner would have had little reason to pique himself on the
success of his politics.
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