“Look here, Brother Colburn, I got to get out o’ here.”

“No, you don’t, young fellow.”

“Yes, I do!” Ramsey whispered, passionately.  “Honest, I do.  Honest, Brother Colburn, I got to get a drink of water.  I got to!”

“No.  You can’t.”

“Honest, Colburn, I got—­”

“Hush!”

Ramsey grunted feebly, and cast his dilating eyes along the rows of faces.  Most of them were but as blurs, swimming, yet he was aware (he thought) of a formidable and horrible impassive scrutiny of himself, a glare seeming to pierce through him to the back of the belt round his waist, so that he began to have fearful doubts about that belt, about every fastening and adjustment of his garments, about the expression of his countenance, and about many other things jumbling together in his consciousness.  Over and over he whispered gaspingly to himself the opening words of the sentence with which Colburn had advised him to begin his argument.  And as the moment of supreme agony drew close, this whispering became continuous:  “In making my first appearance before this honor’ble membership I feel constrained to say in making my first appearance before this honor’ble membership I feel constrained to say in making my first appearance before this honor’ble mem—­”

...It had come.  The chairman announced the subject of the fourth freshman twelve-minute debate; and Dora Yocum, hitherto unperceived by Ramsey, rose and went forward to one of the small desks in the open space, where she stood composedly, a slim, pretty figure in white.  Members in Ramsey’s neighbourhood were aware of a brief and hushed commotion, and of Colburn’s fierce whisper, “You can’t!  You get up there!” And the blanched Ramsey came forth and placed himself at the other desk.

He stood before the silent populace of that morgue, and it seemed to him that his features had forgotten that he was supposed to be their owner and in control of them; he felt that they were slipping all over his face, regardless of his wishes.  His head, as a whole, was subject to an agitation not before known by him; it desired to move rustily in eccentric ways of its own devising; his legs alternately limbered and straightened under no direction but their own; and his hands clutched each other fiercely behind his back; he was not one cohesive person, evidently, but an assembled collection of parts which had relapsed each into its own individuality.  In spite of them, he somehow contrived the semblance of a bow toward the chairman and the semblance of another toward Dora, of whom he was but hazily conscious.  Then he opened his mouth, and, not knowing how he had started his voice going, heard it as if from a distance.

“In making my first appearance before this honor’ble membership I feel restrained to say—­” He stopped short, and thenceforward shook visibly.  After a long pause, he managed to repeat his opening, stopped again, swallowed many times, produced a handkerchief and wiped his face, an act of necessity—­then had an inspiration.