cely phrased, and as good to listen
to as music, and sounding exactly as if it was pouring unprepared out of
heart and brain.

Now at that point ends all that was pleasurable about that notable
celebration of Mr. Whittier's seventieth birthday--because I got up at
that point and followed Winter, with what I have no doubt I supposed
would be the gem of the evening--the gay oration above quoted from the
Boston paper. I had written it all out the day before and had
perfectly memorized it, and I stood up there at my genial and happy and
self-satisfied ease, and began to deliver it. Those majestic guests;
that row of venerable and still active volcanoes, listened; as did
everybody else in the house, with attentive interest. Well, I delivered
myself of--we'll say the first two hundred words of my speech. I was
expecting no returns from that part of the speech, but this was not the
case as regarded the rest of it. I arrived now at the dialogue: "The old
miner said, 'You are the fourth, I'm going to move.' 'The fourth what?'
said I. He answered, 'The fourth littery man that has been here in
twenty-four hours. I am going to move.' 'Why, you don't tell me;' said
I. 'Who were the others?' 'Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Oliver
Wendell Holmes, consound the lot--'"

Now, then, the house's attention continued, but the expression of
interest in the faces turned to a sort of black frost. I wondered
what the trouble was. I didn't know. I went on, but with difficulty--I
struggled along, and entered upon that miner's fearful description
of the bogus Emerson, the bogus Holmes, the bogus Longfellow, always
hoping--but with a gradually perishing hope that somebody--would laugh,
or that somebody would at least smile, but nobody did. I didn't know
enough to give it up and sit down, I was too new to public speaking, and
so I went on with this awful performance, and carried it clear through
to the end, in front of a body of people who seemed turned to stone with
horror. It was the sort of expression their faces would have worn if
I had been making these remarks about the Deity and the rest of the
Trinity; there is no milder way, in which to describe the petrified
condition and the ghastly expression of those people.

When I sat down it was with a heart which had long ceased to beat.
I shall never be as dead again as I was then. I shall never be as
miserable again as I was then. I speak now as one who doesn't know what
the condition of thing