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 pleasant thrill, like that, perhaps, which drowning men feel, ran through my frame.  All became dark,—­and the strong man dropped, like a felled ox, senseless on the stage.

When consciousness returned I was lying flat on my back, and several persons were bending over me.

“Keep down,—­don’t rise,” some one said.

“What has happened?” I asked.

“Nothing,—­only you were a little faint.”

“Faint?  A man who can lift a thousand pounds faint—­at the sight of an audience?  Absurd!  Let me rise.”

And in spite of all opposition I rose, grasped my manuscript, walked to the front of the stage, and resumed my lecture.  Alas!

  “Reaching above our nature does no good;
  We must sink back into our own flesh and blood.”

I had not proceeded far before I felt symptoms of a repetition of the calamity; and lest I should be overtaken before I could retreat, I stammered a few words of apology, and withdrew ingloriously from public view.  Fresh air and a draught of water, which some obliging friend had dashed with eau-de-vie, soon restored me.  But I took the advice of friends and did not make a third attempt that evening.

The audience, had it been wholly composed of brothers and sisters, could not have been more indulgent and considerate.  One skeptical gentleman was heard to say,—­