I rose, and said: "Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I am too much fatigued to make a speech, and I wish to save my voice for to-night; so I will tell you a story of a man I used to know whose name was Hotchkiss. He lived up at New Castle, and one night he thought he would have a little innocent fun scaring his wife by dropping a loose brick or two down the chimney into the fireplace in her room. So he slipped softly out of bed; and dressed in his night-shirt, he stole up stairs and crept out upon the roof. Mr. Hotchkiss dropped nineteen bricks down that chimney, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, each one with an emphatic slam, but his wife didn't scream once."
Everybody seemed to think this was the end of the story; so there was a roar of laughter, although I had not reached the humorous part or the real point of the anecdote, which describes how Hotchkiss gave it up and tried to go down stairs, but was surprised to find that Mrs. Hotchkiss, who had been watching all the time, had retreated fastening the trap-door, so that he spent the next four hours upon the comb of the roof with his trailing garments of the night fluttering in the evening breeze. But they all laughed and began to talk; and the leader of the band, considering that his turn must have come, struck out into "Hail Columbia," while the man with the cymbals seemed animated with fiendish glee.
I tried to explain to the chairman that it was all wrong, that the affair was terribly mixed.
He said he thought himself that it seemed so somehow, and he offered to explain the matter to the company and to give me a chance to tell the story over again properly.
I intimated, gloomily, that if he undertook such a thing I would blow out his brains with the very first horse-pistol I could lay my hands upon.
He said perhaps, then, it would be better not to do.
The proceedings at the mass meeting were to begin at eight o'clock. At half-past seven I went to the telegraph office, and sent the following despatch to the Wilmington papers, fearing the office might be closed when the meeting adjourned:
"Dover, —— —, 18—: A tremendous mass meeting was held here to-night. The utmost enthusiasm was displayed by the crowd. Effective speeches were made by several prominent gentlemen, among them the eloquent young orator Mr. Max Adeler, whose spirited remarks, interspersed with sparkling anecdote, provoked uproarious applause. Dover is good for five hundred majority, and perhaps a thousand."