to think about the unhappy episode.  I resisted that.  I tried to get it out of my mind, and let it die, and I succeeded.  Until Mrs. H.’s letter came, it had been a good twenty-five years since I had thought of that matter; and when she said that the thing was funny I wondered if possibly she might be right.  At any rate, my curiosity was aroused, and I wrote to Boston and got the whole thing copied, as above set forth.

I vaguely remember some of the details of that gathering—­dimly I can see a hundred people—­no, perhaps fifty—­shadowy figures sitting at tables feeding, ghosts now to me, and nameless forevermore.  I don’t know who they were, but I can very distinctly see, seated at the grand table and facing the rest of us, Mr. Emerson, supernaturally grave, unsmiling; Mr. Whittier, grave, lovely, his beautiful spirit shining out of his face; Mr. Longfellow, with his silken white hair and his benignant face; Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, flashing smiles and affection and all good-fellowship everywhere like a rose-diamond whose facets are being turned toward the light first one way and then another—­a charming man, and always fascinating, whether he was talking or whether he was sitting still (what he would call still, but what would be more or less motion to other people).  I can see those figures with entire distinctness across this abyss of time.

One other feature is clear—­Willie Winter (for these past thousand years dramatic editor of the New York Tribune, and still occupying that high post in his old age) was there.  He was much younger then than he is now, and he showed ’it.  It was always a pleasure to me to see Willie Winter at a banquet.  During a matter of twenty years I was seldom at a banquet where Willie Winter was not also present, and where he did not read a charming poem written for the occasion.  He did it this time, and it was up to standard:  dainty, happy, choicely phrased, and as good to listen to as music, and sounding exactly as if it was pouring unprepared out of heart and brain.

Now at that point ends all that was pleasurable about that notable celebration of Mr. Whittier’s seventieth birthday—­because I got up at that point and followed Winter, with what I have no doubt I supposed would be the gem of the evening—­the gay oration above quoted from the Boston paper.  I had written it all out the day before and had perfectly memorized it, and I stood up there at my genial and happy and self-satisfied ease, and began to deliver it.  Those majestic guests; that row of venerable and still active volcanoes, listened; as did everybody else in the house, with attentive interest.  Well, I delivered myself of—­we’ll say the first two hundred words of my speech.  I was expecting no returns from that part of the speech, but this was not the case as regarded the rest of it.  I arrived now at the dialogue:  “The old miner said, ‘You are the fourth, I’m going to move.’  ’The fourth what?’ said I. He answered, ’The fourth littery man that has been here in twenty-four hours.  I am going to move.’  ‘Why, you don’t tell me;’ said I.  ‘Who were the others?’ ’Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, consound the lot—­’”