n, memory, grace of gesture and a voice!

My case is typical. For three or four days before my first ordeal, I
could not eat. A mysterious uneasiness developed in my solar plexus, a
pain which never left me--except possibly in the morning before I had
time to think. Day by day I drilled and drilled and drilled, out in the
fields at the edge of the town or at home when mother was away, in the
barn while milking--at every opportunity I went through my selection
with most impassioned voice and lofty gestures, sustained by the legends
of Webster and Demosthenes, resolved upon a blazing victory. I did
everything but mumble a smooth pebble--realizing that most of the boys
in my section were going through precisely the same struggle. Each of us
knew exactly how the others felt, and yet I cannot say that we displayed
acute sympathy one with another; on the contrary, those in the free
section considered the antics of the suffering section a very amusing
spectacle and we were continually being "joshed" about our lack of
appetite.

The test was, in truth, rigorous. To ask a bashful boy or shy girl fresh
from the kitchen to walk out upon a platform and face that crowd of
mocking students was a kind of torture. No desk was permitted. Each
victim stood bleakly exposed to the pitiless gaze of three hundred eyes,
and as most of us were poorly dressed, in coats that never fitted and
trousers that climbed our boot-tops, we suffered the miseries of the
damned. The girls wore gowns which they themselves had made, and were,
of course, equally self-conscious. The knowledge that their sleeves did
not fit was of more concern to them than the thought of breaking
down--but the fear of forgetting their lines also contributed to their
dread and terror.

While the names which preceded mine were called off that first
afternoon, I grew colder and colder till at last I shook with a nervous
chill, and when, in his smooth, pleasant tenor, Prof. Bush called out
"Hamlin Garland" I rose in my seat with a spring like Jack from his box.
My limbs were numb, so numb that I could scarcely feel the floor beneath
my feet and the windows were only faint gray glares of light. My head
oscillated like a toy balloon, seemed indeed to be floating in the air,
and my heart was pounding like a drum.

However, I had pondered upon this scene so long and had figured my
course so exactly that I made all the turns with moderate degree of
grace and succeeded finally in faci