David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Chapter 11 Page 47

The door was then thrown open, and the general population began to come in, in a long file: several waiting outside, while one entered, affixed his signature, and went out. To everybody in succession, Captain Hopkins said: ‘Have you read it?’ — ‘No.’ — -’Would you like to hear it read?’ If he weakly showed the least disposition to hear it, Captain Hopkins, in a loud sonorous voice, gave him every word of it. The Captain would have read it twenty thousand times, if twenty thousand people would have heard him, one by one.

I remember a certain luscious roll he gave to such phrases as ‘The people’s representatives in Parliament assembled,’ ‘Your petitioners therefore humbly approach your honourable house,’ ‘His gracious