the reader is
informed that I was owing the Doctor for a month's board, and saw no way
of paying it, and that my one suit was distressingly threadbare. There
are other and more interesting ways of getting famous but alas! I rose
only by inches and incredible effort. My reader must be patient with me.

My subjects were ambitious enough, "The Art of Edwin Booth," was ready
for delivery, but "Victor Hugo and his Prose Masterpieces," was only
partly composed and "The Modern German Novel" and "The American Novel"
were in notes merely, therefore with puckered brow and sturdy pen I set
to work in my little attic room, and there I toiled day and night to put
on paper the notions I had acquired concerning these grandiose subjects.

In after years I was appalled at the audacity of that schedule, and I
think I had the grace to be scared at the time, but I swung into it
recklessly. Tickets had been taken by some of the best known men among
the teachers, and I was assured by Mrs. Payne that we would have the
most distinguished audience that ever graced Hyde Park. "Among your
listeners will be the literary editors of several Boston papers, two
celebrated painters, and several well-known professors of oratory," she
said, and like Lieutenant Napoleon called upon to demonstrate his
powers, I graved with large and ruthless fist, and approached my opening
date with palpitating but determined heart.

It was a tense moment for me as (while awaiting my introduction) I
looked into the faces of the men and women seated in that crowded
parlor. Just before the dais, shading his eyes with his hand, was a
small man with a pale face and brown beard. This was Charles E. Hurd,
literary editor of the _Transcript_. Near him sat Theodore Weld, as
venerable in appearance as Socrates (with long white hair and rosy
cheeks), well known as one of the anti-slavery guard, a close friend of
Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison. Beside him was Professor
Raymond of Princeton, the author of several books, while Churchill of
Andover and half a dozen other representatives of great colleges loomed
behind him. I faced them all with a gambler's composure but behind my
mask I was jellied with fear.

However, when I rose to speak, the tremor passed out of my limbs, the
blood came back to my brain, and I began without stammering. This first
paper, fortunately for us all, dealt with Edwin Booth, whom I revered.
To my mind he not only expressed the highest reach o