We were doing very well in Chesumpscot, but the Lyceum has ruined all.  There are now two debating clubs, seminaries of multiloquence.  A few of us old-fashioned fellows have got up an opposition club and called it “The Jolly Oysters.”  No member is allowed to open his mouth except at high-tide by the calendar.  We have biennial festivals on the evening of election day, when the constituency avenges itself in some small measure on its Representative elect by sending a baker’s dozen of orators to congratulate him.

But I am falling into the very vice I condemn,—­like Carlyle, who has talked a quarter of a century in praise of holding your tongue.  And yet something should be done about it.  Even when we get one orator safely underground, there are ten to pronounce his eulogy, and twenty to do it over again when the meeting is held about the inevitable statue.  I go to listen:  we all go:  we are under a spell.  ’T is true, I find a casual refuge in sleep; for Drummond of Hawthornden was wrong when he called Sleep the child of Silence.  Speech begets her as often.  But there is no sure refuge save in Death; and when my life is closed untimely, let there be written on my head-stone, with impartial application to these Black Brunswickers mounted on the high horse of oratory and to our equestrian statues,—­

  Os sublime did it!

THE END