I felt angry at myself, chagrined. There trooped into my guilt-smitten consciousness the innumerable times I must have put ‘h’s’ where they had not belonged and left them off where they should have been retained.
“Nobody ever told me—about it before, sir!” I exclaimed.
“This is just the place to get rid of the habit,” replied the professor. “I am here to help you. I think that when you get rid of that habit you will make a fair showing in public speech. Now that you are aware of it, you will be on your guard.”
I made known my discovery at the waiter’s table at noon, and instantly my friends poured out for my consideration a whole museum of sentences I had originated in their hearing and over which they had secretly smiled. It seems I had said, “’Ave you got your ’at, Brock?” and “Will you ’ave another Hegg, please?” and “Look hout for this ’ot water!” When the waiters saw that I took the criticism in good part and was eagerly anxious to rid my speech of that defect, they were instant and sometimes severe in their criticisms; with the result that in a very short while I gained the advantage over my “h’s” and somewhat tamed them.
With the mastery of my “h’s” and the daily discipline in the oratorical class came an overmastering desire to make a public speech. I thought that if I could accomplish that I should vindicate myself so far as I had gone in my education. It should be the first milestone in my school career. The opportunity was given in a proposed oratorical contest to be held in the village church. I took Thropper into my confidence as I prepared my original oration. Into this I tried to exemplify every admirable rule of rhetoric and every stern rule of logic and every manner of long, short, periodic, balanced, and climactic sentence I was then learning in Rhetoric. I marshalled historical allusions, read widely in the library hour after hour. Then, when I had put myself through this profitable discipline and had typewritten my manuscript—the final triumph of my educational career thus far—I was ready for rehearsals. After I had practised alone and as the evening of the contest drew near, I asked Thropper if each evening after supper he would accompany me into the woods and listen while I delivered my oration. He consented, cheerfully enough. That same evening he accompanied me to the pastures in the rear of the University. I poised myself seriously on a stump, while Thropper stood with his back to the wind in a waiting attitude. I had not delivered more than two paragraphs of my speech before there came a yell from behind me and a half-dozen students ran shouting, applauding and screaming before me. When the crowd of interrupters had exhausted their animal spirits, I said to them, addressing them from the stump,
“I’ve a good mind to invite you to stand out there near Thropper and listen!”
“Why not?” they demanded.
“If you can’t address a bunch of farmers like these,” smiled Thropper, “you won’t be able to stand up in church before three hundred people and give it. Go ahead!”
I did, and the result was that the students rallied about me at the end, carried me on their shoulders, shouting, mockingly,
“Hail to the new Webster!” and to show their approval of me, they sat me astride a rail and would have given me a ride home on that conveyance had not Thropper prevented it.