ry silence, it began to waste away and disappear out of his head
like the rags breaking from the edge of a fog, and presently there
wasn't any fog left. He didn't go on--he didn't last long. It was not
many sentences after his first before he began to hesitate, and break,
and lose his grip, and totter, and wobble, and at last he slumped down
in a limp and mushy pile.

Well, the programme for the occasion was probably not more than
one-third finished, but it ended there. Nobody rose. The next man hadn't
strength enough to get up, and everybody looked so dazed, so stupefied,
paralyzed, it was impossible for anybody to do anything, or even try.
Nothing could go on in that strange atmosphere. Howells mournfully, and
without words, hitched himself to Bishop and me and supported us out of
the room. It was very kind--he was most generous. He towed us tottering
away into some room in that building, and we sat down there. I don't
know what my remark was now, but I know the nature of it. It was the
kind of remark you make when you know that nothing in the world can help
your case. But Howells was honest--he had to say the heart-breaking
things he did say: that there was no help for this calamity, this
shipwreck, this cataclysm; that this was the most disastrous thing that
had ever happened in anybody's history--and then he added, "That is, for
_you_--and consider what you have done for Bishop. It is bad enough in
your case, you deserve to suffer. You have committed this crime, and you
deserve to have all you are going to get. But here is an innocent man.
Bishop had never done you any harm, and see what you have done to him.
He can never hold his head up again. The world can never look upon
Bishop as being a live person. He is a corpse."

That is the history of that episode of twenty-eight years ago, which
pretty nearly killed me with shame during that first year or two
whenever it forced its way into my mind.

Now, then, I take that speech up and examine it. As I said, it arrived
this morning, from Boston. I have read it twice, and unless I am an
idiot, it hasn't a single defect in it from the first word to the last.
It is just as good as good can be. It is smart; it is saturated with
humor. There isn't a suggestion of coarseness or vulgarity in it
anywhere. What could have been the matter with that house? It is
amazing, it is incredible, that they didn't shout with laughter, and
those deities the loudest of them all. Could the