swung his big, formidable knotted stick about his
head.

Those nearest him started back, but the crowd behind rushed forward.
The row increased. The people in the reserved seats in front looked
around with anxious eyes, not knowing what was going on.

The crowd yelled and hooted. It surged nearer. A moment more and the
tall figure would go down.

Now, I'm a loyal man. None more so. I'm an officer and a gentleman. I'm
ready at any moment to lay down my life for the queen and the rest of
the royal family. I'm ready to pitch into the Fenians on any proper
occasion, and all that.

But somehow this didn't seem to me to be the proper occasion. It was
not a Fenian that I saw. It was an elderly gentleman; so sensitive,
that but a few minutes before he had been struggling with his tears; so
lion-hearted, that now he drew himself up and faced a roaring, howling
mob of enemies--calmly, unflinchingly--hurling desperate defiance at
them. And was that the sort of thing that I could stand? What! to see
one man attacked by hundreds--a man like that, too--an old man, alone,
with nothing to sustain him but his own invincible pluck? Pooh! what's
the use of talking? I am an officer and a gentleman, and as such it
would have been a foul disgrace to me if I had been capable of standing
there quietly and looking at the old man at the mercies of the mob.

But, as it happened, I did nothing of the kind.

On the contrary, I sprang forward and stood by the side of the old man.

"Now, look here--you fellows!" I roared--"this is all very fine, and
very loyal, but, damn it! don't it strike you that it's an infernally
cowardly thing to pitch into an old man in this style? He may be a
Fenian, and he may be Old Nick himself, but he's never done you fellows
any harm. What the devil do you mean by kicking up such a row as this?
You touch him, if you dare, that's all! You see my uniform, and you
know what I am. I'm a Bobtail. This man is my friend. He's going out
with me, and I'd like to see the fellow that will stop us."

That's the first speech I ever made in my life, and all that I can say
is, that it was wonderfully successful. Demosthenes, and Cicero, and
the Earl of Chatham, and Burke, and Mirabeau, all rolled into one,
couldn't have been more successful. The mob rolled back. They looked
ashamed. It was a word of sense spoken in a forcible manner. And that I
take it is the essence of true oratory.

The mob rolled back. I gave my new frien