“Who suggested any such night as this, anyhow?” growled Carlyle.  “Five chapters of the Vicar of Wakefield for a starter!  Lord save us, we’ll need a Vicar of Sleepfield if he’s allowed to do this!”

“I move we adjourn,” said Darwin.

“Can’t something be done to keep these younger members quiet?” asked Solomon, frowning upon Carlyle and Darwin.

“Yes,” said Douglas Jerrold.  “Let Goldsmith go on.  He’ll have them asleep in ten minutes.”

Meanwhile, Goldsmith was plodding earnestly through his stint, utterly and happily oblivious of the effect he was having upon his audience.

“This is awful,” whispered Wellington to Bonaparte.

“Worse than Waterloo,” replied the ex-Emperor, with a grin; “but we can stop it in a minute.  Artemas Ward told me once how a camp-meeting he attended in the West broke up to go outside and see a dog-fight.  Can’t you and I pretend to quarrel?  A personal assault by you on me will wake these people up and discombobulate Goldsmith.  Say the word—­only don’t hit too hard.”

“I’m with you,” said Wellington.  Whereupon, with a great show of heat, he roared out, “You?  Never!  I’m more afraid of a boy with a bean-snapper that I ever was of you!” and followed up his remark by pulling Bonaparte’s camp-chair from under him, and letting the conqueror of Austerlitz fall to the floor with a thud which I have since heard described as dull and sickening.

The effect was instantaneous.  Compared to a personal encounter between the two great figures of Waterloo, a reading from his own works by Goldsmith seemed lacking in the elements essential to the holding of an audience.  Consequently, attention was centred in the belligerent warriors, and, by some odd mistake, when a peace-loving member of the assemblage, realizing the indecorousness of the incident, cried out, “Put him out! put him out!” the attendants rushed in, and, taking poor Goldsmith by his collar, hustled him out through the door, across the deck, and tossed him ashore without reference to the gang-plank.  This accomplished, a personal explanation of their course was made by the quarrelling generals, and, peace having been restored, a committee was sent in search of Goldsmith with suitable apologies.  The good and kindly soul returned, but having lost his book in the melee, much to his own gratification, as well as to that of the audience, he was permitted to rest in quiet the balance of the evening.

“Is he through?” said Johnson, poking his head in at the door when order was restored.

“Yes, sir,” said Boswell; “that is to say, he has retired permanently from the field.  He didn’t finish, though.”

“Fellow-spooks,” began Johnson once more, “now that you have been delighted with the honeyed eloquence of the last speaker, it is my privilege to present to you that eminent fabulist Baron Munchausen, the greatest unrealist of all time, who will give you an exhibition of his paradoxical power of lying while standing.”