ho had once been in Boston, thought it would sound well to call for me,
and peeped out, "Ingham!" A few more wretches cried, "Ingham! Ingham!"
Still Isaacs was firm; but the Governor, anxious, indeed, to prevent a
row, knew I would say something, and said, "Our friend Mr. Ingham is
always prepared; and, though we had not relied upon him, he will say a
word perhaps." Applause followed, which turned Dennis's head. He rose,
fluttered, and tried No. 3: "There has been so much said, and, on the
whole, so well said, that I will not longer occupy the time!" and sat
down, looking for his hat; for things seemed squally. But the people
cried, "Go on! go on!" and some applauded. Dennis, still confused, but
flattered by the applause, to which neither he nor I are used, rose
again, and this time tried No. 2: "I am very glad you liked it!" in a
sonorous, clear delivery. My best friends stared. All the people who did
not know me personally yelled with delight at the aspect of the evening;
the Governor was beside himself, and poor Isaacs thought he was undone!
Alas, it was I! A boy in the gallery cried in a loud tone, "It's all an
infernal humbug," just as Dennis, waving his hand, commanded silence,
and tried No. 4: "I agree, in general, with my friend the other side of
the room." The poor Governor doubted his senses and crossed to stop
him,--not in time, however. The same gallery-boy shouted, "How's your
mother?" and Dennis, now completely lost, tried, as his last shot, No.
1, vainly: "Very well, thank you; and you?"

I think I must have been undone already. But Dennis, like another
Lockhard, chose "to make sicker."

The audience rose in a whirl of amazement, rage, and sorrow. Some other
impertinence, aimed at Dennis, broke all restraint, and, in pure Irish,
he delivered himself of an address to the gallery, inviting any person
who wished to fight to come down and do so,--stating, that they were all
dogs and cowards and the sons of dogs and cowards,--that he would take
any five of them single-handed. "Shure, I have said all his Riverence
and the Misthress bade me say," cried he, in defiance; and, seizing the
Governor's cane from his hand, brandished it, quarter-staff fashion,
above his head. He was, indeed, got from the hall only with the greatest
difficulty by the Governor, the City Marshal, who had been called in,
and the Superintendent of my Sunday-School.

The universal impression, of course, was, that the Rev. Frederic Ingham
h