ience will think they are flushed with Bourbon. No matter. That
manuscript has disappeared again. Confusion! Where is it? Here in your
overcoat-pocket. All right.

Five minutes to eight. Grasping the scroll, I rush to the side-entrance.
The audience begin to manifest their impatience by applause. Suddenly I
hear the bell of the Old South Church strike eight. The last vibration
passes like an ice-bolt through my heart. Wrought up to desperation, I
thrust aside the curtain. This gives a portion of the audience a sight of
me, and I hear some one exclaim, "There he is!" Horrible exposure! I dodge
back out of view, as if to escape the discharge of a battery. A round of
impatient applause rouses me. I count three, and precipitate myself
forward to the centre of the stage.

The hall is filled,--all the seats and most of the standing-places
occupied. But I can no longer recognize any one. Friend and foe are
confounded in an undistinguishable mass; or, rather, they are but parts
and members of one hideous monster, moving itself by one volition, winking
its thousand eyes all at once, and ready to swallow me with a single
deglutition. However, the plunge is made. The worst is over. I rallied
from the shock, and in a clear, but unnecessarily loud and ponderous
voice, pitched many degrees too high, I commenced my lecture.

For some ten minutes, if I may believe the tender reports in the
newspapers the next day, I got on very respectably. I had won the
attention of the audience. But, at an unlucky moment, a fresh arrival of
persons at the door made the monster turn his thousand eyes in that
direction. I mistook it for an indication that he was getting weary of my
talk. My attention was distracted. Then came a suspension of all thought,
an appalling paralysis of memory. Having learnt the first part of my
discourse by heart, I had been reciting it without turning over the leaves
of the manuscript; and now I was unable to recollect at what point I had
left off, or whether I had given five pages or ten.

Frightful dilemma! Stupefied with horror, I gazed intently on the page
before me till the lines became all blurred, and a blue mist wavered
before my eyes. Then came a pause of intensest silence. The monster lying
in wait for me evidently began to anticipate that his victim's time was
come, and so, like a crafty monster, he remained still and patient. Who
could endure a nightmare like this? I felt myself reeling to and fro. Then
a ple