the
balance Americans of the type their countrymen are least proud of. If
there was an honest man among them he sedulously concealed his title
to distinction; I know there wasn't a sober one. The amount of liquor
consumed was portentous; and I gloated with an unholy joy as I saw man
after man rapidly making himself what diplomatists call a _quantite
negligeable_. The conversation needed all the excuse the occasion
could afford, and the wit would have appeared unduly coarse in a
common pot-house. All this might have passed from my memory,
or blended in a subdued harmony with my general impression of
Aureataland; but the peculiar position in which I stood gave to my
mind an unusual activity of perception. Among this band of careless,
drunken revelers I sat vigilant, restless, and impatient; feigning
to take a leading part in their dissolute hilarity, I was sober,
collected, and alert to my very finger-tips. I anxiously watched their
bearing and expression. I led them on to speak of the President,
rejoicing when I elicited open murmurs and covert threats at his base
ingratitude to the men on whose support his power rested. They had not
been paid for six months, and were ripe for any mischief. I was more
than once tempted to forestall the colonel and begin the revolution
on my own account; only my inability to produce before their eyes any
arguments of the sort they would listen to restrained me.

Eleven o'clock had come and gone. The senior captain had proposed the
President's health. It was drunk in sullen silence; I was the only man
who honored it by rising from his seat.

The major had proposed the army, and they had drunk deep to their
noble selves. A young man of weak expression and quavering legs had
proposed "The commerce of Aureataland," coupled with the name of Mr.
John Martin, in laudatory but incoherent terms, and I was on my legs
replying. Oh, that speech of mine! For discursiveness, for repetition,
for sheer inanity, I suppose it has never been equaled. I droned
steadily away, interrupted only by cries for fresh supplies of wine;
as I went on the audience paid less and less attention. It was past
twelve. The well of my eloquence was running drier and drier, and yet
no sound outside! I wondered how long they would stand it and how long
I could stand it. At 12.15 I began my peroration. Hardly had I done
so, when one of the young men started in a gentle voice an utterly
indescribable ditty. One by one they too