"No, sir," Mr. Yorke said decisively, "I could not."
"Well, couldn't you go out and make a speech for me? You're about my build. It's easy. I could say it in my sleep. Honored—free and intelligent people—your beautiful town—glorious cause, etc. Fill it in as you like."
Mr. Yorke laughed. "I'm about half your build, and my voice is as much like yours as a crow's is like a nightingale's. Go along. When you've embarked in this sort of thing, you must take the consequences."
As another and still more imperative call came up, the honorable gentleman rose with a yawn, and the two stepped out into the balcony.
"My dear friends," began the speaker in silvery-clear tones, "words fail me to express the feelings which move my heart when I listen to this generous welcome." (Applause.)
"Well for you that they do," parenthesized Mr. Yorke.
"Your approval honors you more than it does me," resumed the senator. "For what am I but the mouthpiece by which you speak, as the thunder-cloud speaks by the lightning? The mass of the people gather the truth, and it is their fire which informs the leader, and incites him to utter it forth. They are the—" (Immense applause.)
"The idiots!" exclaimed the orator. "They have broken into my best paragraph where it can't be mended. I must wind up."
"The fame of your town has reached me," he went on. "I have heard of it as a place where freedom is not only loved, but adored, where oppression is not only hated, but trampled on; and to-day, when I drove over the distant hills, and saw the white spires of your churches rising out of the forests, they seemed to me like warning fingers pointing heavenward, as though the genius of the place bade me remember that the angelic hosts were witnessing if I and if you were faithful to the sacred trust placed in our keeping." (Tempests of applause).
"That always takes," remarked the senator to his companion. "Spires are trumps."