eleven o'clock
People who had no right of membership ran ravening to the Literary Institute and the Constitutional Literary Society , and peered over the shoulders of legitimate readers , on such a day as this unrebuked . Mr. Chown 's drapery establishment presented a strange spectacle . For several hours it was thronged with sturdy Radicals eager to hear their eminent friend hold forth on the situation . At eleven o'clock Mr. Chown fairly mounted a chair behind his counter , and delivered a formal harangue -- thus , as he boasted , opening the political campaign . He read aloud -LRB- for the seventh time -RRB- Lord Beaconsfield 's public letter to the Duke of Marlborough , in which the country was warned , to begin with , against the perils of Home Rule . `` It is to be hoped that all men of light and leading will resist this destructive doctrine ... . Rarely in this century has there been an occasion more critical .