s a gloomy night, and the streets wore a dismal aspect. The hall was
distant about three miles; but in some mysterious manner, or by some route
which I have never been able to discover, the coachman seemed to abridge
the distance to less than half a mile. We are in Summer Street,--before
the door. Some juvenile amateurs, attracted by stories of the strong man,
surround the carriage to get a sight of him.

"Ha! what are these? Sure, hangmen, That come to bind my hands, and then
to drag me Before the judgment-seat: now they are new shapes, And do
appear like Furies!"

The words of Sir Giles Overreach, one of the parts I had studied during my
histrionic _acces_, were not at all inappropriate to the state of mind in
which, with knee-joints slipping from under me, I now made my way
up-stairs. Having reached the upper entry, I paused, and glanced at the
audience through the windows, before entering the little retiring-room
behind the stage. With an inward groan at my presumption, I passed on. To
think, that, but for my own madness, I might have been at that moment
comfortably at home, reading the evening paper! Nay, were it not better to
be tossing on stormy seas, driving on a lee-shore, toiling as a slave
under a tropic sun, than here, with a gaping audience waiting to devour me
with their eyes and ears?

The first thing I did, on reaching the retiring-room, was to give way to a
fearful fascination and take another peep at the audience from behind a
curtain at the side-entrance. I then looked at my watch. Twenty minutes to
eight! People were pouring in, notwithstanding the inclement weather. The
hall was nearly crowded already. One familiar face after another was
recognized. Surely everybody I know is present.

Another look at my watch. Quarter to eight! Suddenly the frantic thought
occurred to me, What if I have lost my manuscript? Where did I put it?
'Tis in none of my pockets! Good gracious! Has any one seen my manuscript?
Come, Jerome, no fooling at a time like this! Where have you hidden it?
What! You know nothing about it? _Hunt_ for it, then! Wouldn't it be a
charming scrape, if I couldn't find my lecture? Isn't this it, in the
drawer? Oh, yes! I must have put it there unconsciously.

Being in a high state of perspiration, and wiping my forehead incessantly,
I disarrange my hair. Where's that brush? No one can tell. Agony! Where's
the brush? Here on the floor. Oh, yes! There! What a blaze my cheeks are
in! The aud