He (Lord Chatham) made an administration, so checkered and speckled; he put together a piece of joinery, so crossly indented and whimsically dove-tailed; a cabinet so variously inlaid; such a piece of diversified mosaic; such a tessellated pavement without cement; here a bit of black stone, and there a bit of white; patriots and courtiers, king's friends and republicans; Whigs and Tories; treacherous friends and open enemies ;—that it was, indeed, a very curious show; but utterly unsafe to touch, and unsure to stand on. The colleagues whom he had assorted at the same hoards stared at each other, and were obliged to ask, "Sir, your name? — Sir, you have the advantage of me — Mr. Such-a-one — I beg a thousand pardons —" I venture to say, it did so happen that persons had a single office divided between them, who had never spoken to each other in their lives; until they found themselves, they knew not how, pigging together, heads and points, in the same truckle-bed. — American Taxation (II. 138).