words are asinine, and
he knows they are asinine. His wits have entirely abandoned him: he is
an idiot for the time. Have you sat next a man unused to speaking at a
public dinner? have you seen him nervously rise and utter an incoherent,
ungrammatical, and unintelligible sentence or two, and then sit down
with a ghastly smile? Have you heard him say to his friend on the other
side, in bitterness, "I have made a fool of myself"? And have you seen
him sit moodily through the remainder of the feast, evidently ruminating
on what he said, seeing now what he ought to have said, and trying to
persuade himself that what he said was not so bad after all? Would you
do a kindness to that miserable man? You have just heard his friend
on the other side cordially agreeing with what he had said as to the
badness of the appearance made by him. Enter into conversation with
him; talk of his speech; congratulate him upon it; tell him you were
extremely struck by the freshness and naturalness of what he said,--that
there is something delightful in hearing an unhackneyed speaker,--that
to speak with entire fluency looks professional,--it is like a barrister
or a clergyman. Thus you may lighten the mortification of a disappointed
man; and what you say will receive considerable credence. It is
wonderful how readily people believe anything they would like to be
true.

* * * * *

I was walking this afternoon along a certain street, coming home from
visiting certain sick persons, and wondering how I should conclude this
essay, when, standing on the pavement on one side of the street, I saw a
little boy four years old crying in great distress. Various individuals,
who appeared to be Priests and Levites, looked, as they passed, at the
child's distress, and passed on without doing anything to relieve it. I
spoke to the little man, who was in great fear at being spoken to, but
told me he had come away from his home and lost himself, and could not
find his way back. I told him I would take him home, if he could tell me
where he lived; but he was frightened into utter helplessness, and could
only tell that his name was Tom, and that he lived at the top of a
stair. It was a poor neighborhood, in which many people live at the
top of stairs, and the description was vague. I spoke to two humble
decent-looking women who were passing, thinking they might gain the
little thing's confidence better than I; but the poor little ma