BILLY'S GREAT SPEECH.
BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD.
Billy was the youngest member of the debating society; that is, the other members were all grown-up men, though none of them were very old, and he was not yet quite fourteen years of age. Some of the boys he knew told him he had been let in by mistake, and some said it was a joke; but there he was, week after week, every Friday evening, sitting on a front bench, and as much a member as the president, or the secretary, or either of the three vice-presidents.
One of the names of that village debating society was "The Lyceum," but it wasn't much used, except when they had distinguished strangers to lecture for them, and charged twenty-five cents apiece for tickets.
The regular weekly debates were "free," and so there was always a good attendance. The ladies, of all ages, were sure to come, and a good many of the boys. Billy never missed a debate; but he had not yet made so much as one single solitary speech on any subject. Nobody knew how often he had entered that hall with a big speech in him, all ready, or how he had always carried it out again unspoken.
A little after the Christmas and New-Years' holidays there was a question proposed for the society to debate that Billy was sure he could handle. It had something to do with the Constitution of the United States, and Grandfather Morton said it "was too political altogether"; but Billy silently determined that at last he would make himself heard. He read several things in order to get his mind ready, especially the Life of Benjamin Franklin and Captain Cook's Voyages.
He could not see just how they helped him, but he knew that was the way to do it. Then he practiced his speech, too, in the garret, and up in the pasture lot, and out in the barn, where he was sure nobody could hear him, and the night before the debate was to be he hardly slept a wink.
He knew Grandfather Morton and all the family would be there; and they had scared him out of making more than half a dozen speeches before, but he made up his mind not to be afraid of them this time. Speak he would!
He was careful about his dress, as every public speaker should be, and succeeded in borrowing one of his father's standing collars. It was dreadfully stiff with starch, but it would not hurt his ears if he held his head straight.
When he got to the Lyceum Hall it seemed to him to have grown a good deal since the week before, and to have a greater multitude of men and women in it than he had ever dreamed of.