my brain-storm. These
patient, long-suffering people were not to blame; many of them had come
several miles through the storm to hear me speak and were entitled to
the best that was in me. To vent upon them my spent steam because--No,
that was impossible.

"Hold on, my friend," I said, "stop where you are, let me pull myself
together. This isn't their fault--" We were passing behind the screen
hiding the little stage.

But he didn't hold on; he marched straight ahead; so did I, past the
pitcher of ice water and the two last winter's palms, where he motioned
me to a chair.

His introduction was not long, nor was it discursive. There was nothing
eulogistic of my various acquirements, occupations, talents; no remark
about the optimistic trend of my literature, the affection in which my
characters were held; nothing of this at all. Nor did I expect it. What
interested me more was the man himself.

The steam of my wrath had blurred his outline and make-up before; now I
got a closer, although a side, view of his person. He was a short man,
much thicker at the middle than he was at either end--a defect all the
more apparent by reason of a long-tailed, high-waisted, unbuttonable
black coat which, while it covered his back and sides, would have left
his front exposed, but for his snowy white waistcoat, which burst like a
ball of cotton from its pod.

His only gesture was the putting together of his ten fingers, opening
and touching them again to accentuate his sentences. What passed through
my mind as I sat and watched him, was not the audience, nor what I
was going to say to them, but the Christianlike self-control of this
gentleman--a control which seemed to carry with it a studied reproof.
Under its influence I unconsciously closed both furnace doors and opened
my forced draft. Even then I should have reached for the safety-valve,
but for an oily, martyr-like smile which flickered across his face,
accompanied by a deprecating movement of his elbows, both indicating his
patience under prolonged suffering, and his instant readiness to turn
the other cheek if further smiting on my part was in store for him. I
strode to the edge of the platform: "I know, good people," I exploded,
"that you are not responsible for what has happened, but I want to tell
you before I begin, that I have been boiling mad for ten minutes and am
still at white heat, and that it is going to take me some time to get
cool enough to be of the slightes