Mr. Delafield will address you.”  Delafield had forgotten the knives and forks, and was playing the Ruy Lopez opening at the chess-club.  “The Rev. Mr. Auchmuty will address you.”  Auchmuty had promised to speak late, and was at the school-committee.  “I see Dr. Stearns in the hall; perhaps he will say a word.”  Dr. Stearns said he had come to listen and not to speak The Governor and Isaacs whispered.  The Governor looked at Dennis, who was resplendent on the platform; but Isaacs, to give him his due, shook his head.  But the look was enough.  A miserable lad, ill-bred, who had once been in Boston, thought it would sound well to call for me, and peeped out, “Ingham!” A few more wretches cried, “Ingham!  Ingham!” Still Isaacs was firm; but the Governor, anxious, indeed, to prevent a row, knew I would say something, and said, “Our friend Mr. Ingham is always prepared; and, though we had not relied upon him, he will say a word perhaps.”  Applause followed, which turned Dennis’s head.  He rose, fluttered, and tried No. 3:  “There has been so much said, and, on the whole, so well said, that I will not longer occupy the time!” and sat down, looking for his hat; for things seemed squally.  But the people cried, “Go on! go on!” and some applauded.  Dennis, still confused, but flattered by the applause, to which neither he nor I are used, rose again, and this time tried No. 2:  “I am very glad you liked it!” in a sonorous, clear delivery.  My best friends stared.  All the people who did not know me personally yelled with delight at the aspect of the evening; the Governor was beside himself, and poor Isaacs thought he was undone!  Alas, it was I!  A boy in the gallery cried in a loud tone, “It’s all an infernal humbug,” just as Dennis, waving his hand, commanded silence, and tried No. 4:  “I agree, in general, with my friend the other side of the room.”  The poor Governor doubted his senses and crossed to stop him,—­not in time, however.  The same gallery-boy shouted, “How’s your mother?” and Dennis, now completely lost, tried, as his last shot, No. 1, vainly:  “Very well, thank you; and you?”

I think I must have been undone already.  But Dennis, like another Lockhard, chose “to make sicker.”

The audience rose in a whirl of amazement, rage, and sorrow.  Some other impertinence, aimed at Dennis, broke all restraint, and, in pure Irish, he delivered himself of an address to the gallery, inviting any person who wished to fight to come down and do so,—­stating, that they were all dogs and cowards and the sons of dogs and cowards,—­that he would take any five of them single-handed.  “Shure, I have said all his Riverence and the Misthress bade me say,” cried he, in defiance; and, seizing the Governor’s cane from his hand, brandished it, quarter-staff fashion, above his head.  He was, indeed, got from the hall only with the greatest difficulty by the Governor, the City Marshal, who had been called in, and the Superintendent of my Sunday-School.