More applause, in which a slight whistling flavor was apparent. A kicking, as of cow-hide boots of juvenile proportions, audible from the gallery. A suspicion of cat-calling in a monad state of development about the door. Of course my prospects were ruined. My knees seemed disposed to deposit their burden upon the floor. Hope was utterly extinguished in my breast. There I stood, weak and contemptible, before the wretched populace whose votes I had come to solicit. Then it was, the resolution, or rather the rage, of despair inspired me. I determined to take a terrible vengeance upon my abandoned constituents. Quick as lightning the thought leaped to execution. I seized the insufferable composition before me, and began to fulminate its sentences at the democracy of Foxden.
"Fulminate" is expressive; but words like "roar" and "bellow" must be borrowed to give the reader an idea of the vocal power put into that performance. For it is a habit of our infirm natures to counteract embarrassment by some physical exaggeration, which, by absorbing our chief attention, leaves little to be occupied with the cause of distress. Persons of extreme diffidence are sometimes able to face society by behaving as if they were vulgarly at their ease, and men troubled with a morbid modesty often find relief in acting a character of overweening pride. Thus it was only by absorbing attention in the effort to produce a very sensational order of declamation that I could perform the task undertaken. Owlsdarck's handwriting was luckily large and legible; and I was able to storm and gesticulate without hinderance.
I ploughed through the tough old homily, tossing up the biggest size of words as if they were not worth thinking of. I went at the lamented Cheops with a fearful enthusiasm. The air seemed heavy with a miasma of information. It was not my fault, if every individual in the audience did not feel personally sticky with the glutinous drugs I lavished upon the embalmment. I was as profuse with my myrrh, cassia, and aloes, as if those costly vegetable productions were as cheap as cabbages. I split up a sycamore-tree to make an external shell, as if it were as familiar a wood as birch or hemlock. At last, having got his case painted all over with appropriate emblems, and Cheops himself done up in his final wrapping, I struck a mighty blow upon the desk, which set the lamps ringing and flaring in majestic emphasis.
It was at this point that the presence of an audience was once more recalled to me. Enthusiastic applause, peal after peal, responded to my efforts. I ventured to look out into the hall before me. Dr. Dastick was thumping with energy upon the neighboring settee. The elders of Foxden were leading the approbation, and a wild tattoo was resonant from the gallery. The face of Colonel Prowley was aglow with satisfaction, and the dear old gentleman actually waved his handkerchief as he caught my eye. But my frightened, pale-faced Kate,—my first shudder returned again as I met her gaze. Again I felt the sinking, prickling sensation of being in for it. There was no resource but to charge at the Professor's manuscript as vigorously as ever.
I now went to pyramid-making with the same zeal with which I had acted as undertaker. Locks, parsley, and garlic, to the amount of one thousand and sixty talents, were lavished upon the workmen. Stuffed cats and sacred crocodiles were carried in procession to encourage them. Stones, thirty feet long, were heaved out of quarries, and hieroglyphics chopped into them with wonderful despatch. At last, after an hour and a half of laborious vociferation, I managed to get the pyramid done and Cheops put into it. A sort of dress-parade of authorities was finally called: Herodotus, Tacitus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Pliny, Solinus, and many others, were fired in concluding volleys among the audience. I was conscious of a salvo of clapping, pounding, and stamping that thundered in reply. The last sentence had been uttered. Again the audience blurred and danced before my eyes; I staggered back, and sank confused and breathless into the orator's chair.
"Good, good," whispered the President. "It was a capital idea; ha, ha, very funny! To hear you hammering away at Egyptian antiquities as if you'd never thought of anything else! The elocution and gestures, too, were perfectly tall;—the Young Men of our Society were delighted;—I could see they were."
"Permit me to congratulate you, Sir," said Dr. Dastick, who had elbowed his way to the platform. "I confess myself most agreeably disappointed in your performance. There was in it a solidity of information and a curiosity of important research for which I was totally unprepared. Let me hope that such powers of oratory as we have heard this evening may soon plead the cause of good learning in the legislature of our State."
"A good subject, my dear young friend, and admirably developed," exclaimed Colonel Prowley. "You have already won the palm of victory, if I rightly read the faces of some who were too quick to endow you with the common levity and indiscretion of youth."
"You have had success with young and old," said the Reverend Mr. Clifton, kindly holding out his hand. "We have rarely lecturers who seem to give such universal satisfaction."
After these congratulations, and others to the same purpose, the real state of the case could no longer be hidden. Instead of the mortification and defeat confidently expected, I had unwittingly made a ten-strike upon that erratic set of pins, the Foxden public. The Young Men, who knew me only as the γελωτοποιος, or laughter-maker, of their merry association, considered the sombre getting up and energetic delivery of the Cheops lecture the very best joke I had ever perpetrated. Some of the most influential citizens, as has been already seen, were personally gratified in the general dustiness of the subject; while others, perchance, were able to doze in the consciousness that the opinions of Cheops upon such disturbing topics as Temperance, Anti-Slavery, and Woman's Rights must necessarily be of a patriarchal and comforting character. But the glory of the unlooked-for triumph seemed strangely lessened by the reflection that I had no just claim to the funereal plumage with which I had so happily decked myself.