the marriage solemnized in all form,
and acknowledged by the whole world."

When the cheer which greeted these words had subsided, he went on to
glance at what might possibly have been the theme of the other lecturer:
"I am told," said he,--"for I never saw him,--that he was a young, a
very young man. But to speak of the scenes to which I am coming, it is
not enough to have read, studied, and reflected. A man should have done
more; he ought to have seen, heard, and acted. These confessions are
bought dearly, for it is at the price of old age I can make them; but is
it not worth old age to have heard Burke in all the majestic grandeur
of his great powers,--to have listened to the scathing whirlwind of
Grattan's passion,--to have sat beneath the gallery when Flood denounced
him, and that terrible duel of intellect took place, far more moving
than the pistol encounter that followed it? Ay, I knew them all! I have
jested with Parsons, laughed with Toler, laughed and wept both with poor
Curran. You may find it difficult to believe that he who now addresses
you should ever have moved in the class to which such men pertained. You
here, whose course of life, sustained by untiring toil and animated by
a spirit of resolute courage, moves ever upward, who are better to-day
than yesterday, and will to-morrow be farther on the road than to-day,
who labor the soil of which your grandchildren will be the proud
possessors, may have some difficulty in tracing a career of continued
descent, and will be slow to imagine how a man could fall from a station
of respectability and regard, and be--such as I am!"

Just as the speaker had uttered these words, a cry, so wild and piercing
as to thrill through every heart, resounded through the building; the
great mass of men seemed to heave and swell like the sea in a storm.
It was one of those marvellous moments in which human emotions seem
whispered from breast to breast, and men are moved by a strange flood of
sympathy; and now the crowd opened, like a cleft wave, to give passage
to a young man, who with a strength that seemed supernatural forced his
way to the front. There was that in his wild, excited look that almost
bespoke insanity, while he struggled to effect his passage.

Astonished by the scene of commotion in front of him, and unable to
divine its cause, the lecturer haughtily asked, "Who comes here to
disturb the order of this meeting?" The answer was quickly rendered,
as, springin