I imagined it!
'Why not?' says he; 'I'd as soon as not tell it to anyone of them, and
why not to them all together?' Well, why not, when you come to think
of it? So we have got it into the speech; and I, I myself, Sarah, am
drilling young Demos-thenes, and he is so apt a scholar that I find
myself rather pleasantly employed." Having read her letter, Mrs.
Carriswood hesitated a second and then added Derry's information at
the bottom of the page. "I suppose the lordly ancestor was one of King
James's creation--see Macaulay, somewhere in the second volume. I dare
say there is a drop or two of good blood in the boy. He has the manners
of a gentleman--but I don't know that I ever saw an Irishman, no matter
how low in the social scale, who hadn't."

Thus it happened that Tommy's valedictory scored a success that is a
tradition of the High School, and came to be printed in both the city
papers; copies of which journals Tommy's mother has preserved sacredly
to this day; and I have no doubt, could one find them, they would be
found wrapped around a yellow photograph of the "A Class" of 1870: eight
pretty girls in white, smiling among five solemn boys in black, and
Tommy himself, as the valedictorian, occupying the centre of the picture
in his new suit of broadcloth, with a rose in his buttonhole and his
hair cut by a professional barber for the occasion.

It was the story of the famine that really captured the audience; and
Tommy told it well, with the true Irish fire, in a beautiful voice.

In the front seat of the parquette a little old man in a wrinkled black
broadcloth, with a bald head and a fringe of whisker under his long
chin, and a meek little woman, in a red Paisley shawl, wept and laughed
by turns. They had taken the deepest interest in every essay and every
speech. The old man clapped his large hands (which were encased in
loose, black kid gloves) with unflagging vigor. He wore a pair of heavy
boots, the soles of which made a noble thud on the floor.

"Ain't it wonderful the like of them young craters can talk like that!"
he cried; "shure, Molly, that young lady who'd the essay--where is
it?"--a huge black forefinger travelled down the page--"'_Music, The
Turkish Patrol_,' No--though that's grand, that piece; I'll be spakin'
wid Professor Von Keinmitz to bring it when we've the opening. Here
'tis, Molly: '_Tin, Essay. The Darkest Night Brings Out the Stars,
Miss Mamie Odenheimer_.' Thrue for you, mavourneen! And t