and seeing in my face, I suppose, the consternation of a wholly unpractised orator, he kindly added,—­“It is nothing.  A mere acknowledgment will answer the purpose.  The less you say, the better they will like it.”  That being the case, I suggested that perhaps they would like it best, if I said nothing at all.  But the Sergeant shook his head.  Now, on first receiving the Mayor’s invitation to dinner, it had occurred to me that I might possibly be brought into my present predicament; but I had dismissed the idea from my mind as too disagreeable to be entertained, and, moreover, as so alien from my disposition and character that Fate surely could not keep such a misfortune in store for me.  If nothing else prevented, an earthquake or the crack of doom would certainly interfere before I need rise to speak.  Yet here was the Mayor getting on inexorably,—­and, indeed, I heartily wished that he might get on and on forever, and of his wordy wanderings find no end.

If the gentle reader, my kindest friend and closest confidant, deigns to desire it, I can impart to him my own experience as a public speaker quite as indifferently as if it concerned another person.  Indeed, it does concern another, or a mere spectral phenomenon, for it was not I, in my proper and natural self, that sat there at table or subsequently rose to speak.  At the moment, then, if the choice had been offered me whether the Mayor should let off a speech at my head or a pistol, I should unhesitatingly have taken the latter alternative.  I had really nothing to say, not an idea in my head, nor, which was a great deal worse, any flowing words or embroidered sentences in which to dress out that empty Nothing, and give it a cunning aspect of intelligence, such as might last the poor vacuity the little time it had to live.  But time pressed; the Mayor brought his remarks, affectionately eulogistic of the United States and highly complimentary to their distinguished representative at that table, to a close, amid a vast deal of cheering; and the band struck up “Hail Columbia,” “Old Hundred,” or “God save the Queen” over again, for anything that I should have known or cared.  When the music ceased, there was an intensely disagreeable instant, during which I seemed to rend away and fling off the habit of a lifetime, and rose, still void of ideas, but with preternatural composure, to make a speech.  The guests rattled on the table, and cried, “Hear!” most vociferously, as if now, at length, in this foolish and idly garrulous world, had come the long-expected moment when one golden word was to be spoken; and in that imminent crisis, I caught a glimpse of a little bit of an effusion of international sentiment, which it might, and must, and should do to utter.