ss, and therefore a safe person to
know. Now, my son, go ahead and speak your piece."

The good old spirit sat down, and the scruples of the objectors having
thus been satisfied, Captain Kidd began.

"Now that I know you all," he remarked, as pleasantly as he could under
the circumstances, "I feel that I can speak more freely, and certainly
with a great deal less embarrassment than if I were addressing a gathering
of entire strangers. I am not much of a hand at speaking, and have always
felt somewhat nonplussed at finding myself in a position of this nature.
In my whole career I never experienced but one irresistible impulse to
make a public address of any length, and that was upon that unhappy
occasion to which the greatest and grandest of my great-grandmothers has
alluded, and that only as the chain by which I was suspended in mid-air
tightened about my vocal chords. At that moment I could have talked
impromptu for a year, so fast and numerously did thoughts of the uttermost
import surge upward into my brain; but circumstances over which I had no
control prevented the utterance of those thoughts, and that speech is
therefore lost to the world."

"He has the gift of continuity," observed Madame Recamier.

"Ought to be in the United States Senate," smiled Elizabeth.

"I wish I could make up my mind as to whether he is outrageously handsome
or desperately ugly," remarked Helen of Troy. "He fascinates me, but
whether it is the fascination of liking or of horror I can't tell, and
it's quite important."

"Ladies," resumed the captain, his uneasiness increasing as he came to the
point, "I am but the agent of your respective husbands, _fiances_, and
other masculine guardians. The gentlemen who were previously the tenants
of this club-house have delegated to me the important, and I may add
highly agreeable, task of showing you the world. They have noted of late
years the growth of that feeling of unrest which is becoming every day
more and more conspicuous in feminine circles in all parts of the
universe--on the earth, where women are clamoring to vote, and to be
allowed to go out late at night without an escort; in Hades, where, as you
are no doubt aware, the management of the government has fallen almost
wholly into the hands of the Furies; and even in the halls of Jupiter
himself, where, I am credibly informed, Juno has been taking private
lessons in the art of hurling thunderbolts--information which the
extraordinary