pursue the
subject, _although they every one agreed with me_. I answered that I
would. That nothing should deter me. . . . That the shame was theirs,
not mine; and that as I would not spare them when I got home, I would
not be silenced here. Accordingly, when the night came, I asserted my
right, with all the means I could command to give it dignity, in face,
manner, or words; and I believe that if you could have seen and heard
me, you would have loved me better for it than ever you did in your
life.

"The _New York Herald_, which you will receive with this, is the
_Satirist_ of America; but having a great circulation (on account of its
commercial intelligence and early news) it can afford to secure the best
reporters. . . . My speech is done, upon the whole, with remarkable
accuracy. There are a great many typographical errors in it; and by the
omission of one or two words, or the substitution of one word for
another, it is often materially weakened. Thus, I did not say that I
'claimed' my right, but that I 'asserted' it; and I did not say that I
had 'some claim,' but that I had 'a most righteous claim,' to speak. But
altogether it is very correct."

* * * * *

Washington Irving was chairman of this dinner, and, having from the
first a dread that he should break down in his speech, the catastrophe
came accordingly. Near him sat the Cambridge professor who had come with
Dickens by boat from New Haven, with whom already a warm friendship had
been formed that lasted for life, and who has pleasantly sketched what
happened. Mr. Felton saw Irving constantly in the interval of
preparation, and could not but despond at his daily iterated foreboding
of _I shall certainly break down_; though besides the real dread there
was a sly humor which heightened its whimsical horror with an
irresistible drollery. But the professor plucked up hope a little when
the night came and he saw that Irving had laid under his plate the
manuscript of his speech. During dinner, nevertheless, his old
foreboding cry was still heard, and "at last the moment arrived; Mr.
Irving rose; and the deafening and long-continued applause by no means
lessened his apprehension. He began in his pleasant voice; got through
two or three sentences pretty easily, but in the next hesitated; and,
after one or two attempts to go on, gave it up, with a graceful allusion
to the tournament and the troop of knights all armed and eager for the