The panorama was rigged up at the end of the lecture room, in front of the desk, under the personal supervision of a former assistant of Banvard’s, and worked beautifully, saving an occasional squeak in the rollers.

Tiffles, in his character of Professor Wesley, told his story glibly and with perfect coolness, interspersing the heavier details with amusing anecdotes, which made the ministers smile, and brought out a loud titter of laughter from the ministers’ wives, and tremendous applause, inclusive of stamping and the banging of hymn books, from the ministers’ children.

One of the children, with the love of mischief peculiar to that division of the human family, had provided himself with peas, and, taking advantage of the partial darkness in which the panorama was exhibited, shot those missiles with practised aim at Professor Wesley, and now and then hit him in the face.  The lecturer kept in good humor; and when, after a smart volley of peas, Rev. Dr. A——­ arose, and suggested that these disturbances were disgraceful, and, although he did not wish to meddle with the household government of his brethren, he thought that the children who were guilty of such outrages ought to be taken home, soundly whipped, and put to bed—­when Rev. Dr. A——­, moved by just indignation, did this, the lecturer smiled, and blandly said:  Oh, no; he wasn’t annoyed in the least (at the same time receiving a pea on his left cheek).  He would trust to the generosity of his young friends not to fire their peas too hard; and he hoped that the reverend gentleman would withdraw his suggestion.

Cries of “All right, brother!” “We’ll keep the boys quiet!” “Go on! go on!” went up from all parts of the room.  Rev. Dr. A——­, yielding to the pressure, sat down, and received, at that moment, one pea on the right eye of his gold spectacles, and another square on the end of his nose.  The two peas were fired by his second son John, who had been delivering this invisible artillery all the evening from the other end of the identical pew in which the Rev. Dr. was seated.  He groaned in the spirit, and muttered something to Mrs. Rev. Dr. A——­ about the degeneracy of other people’s children, which made that lady chuckle low, under cover of the night; for she knew that her second son John was the pea-shooter, and had made vain efforts to stop him, by pinching his leg, though the good matron could not help laughing at every fine shot achieved by her promising boy.

Professor Wesley “went on,” as requested, and so did the pea-shooting, until John’s stock of ammunition gave out.

The lecturer had ransacked the Society, Astor, and Mercantile libraries, and stuffed himself with facts touching the interior of Africa, so far as that mystery had been explored.  Fortified with these facts, and a lively imagination, he found no difficulty in satisfying the curiosity of his auditors on every point; and answered questions of all sorts, which were fired at him even thicker than the peas, without the least hesitation.