think about the unhappy episode. I resisted that. I tried to get it out
of my mind, and let it die, and I succeeded. Until Mrs. H.’s letter
came, it had been a good twenty-five years since I had thought of that
matter; and when she said that the thing was funny I wondered if possibly
she might be right. At any rate, my curiosity was aroused, and I wrote
to Boston and got the whole thing copied, as above set forth.
I vaguely remember some of the details of that gathering–dimly I can see
a hundred people–no, perhaps fifty–shadowy figures sitting at tables
feeding, ghosts now to me, and nameless forevermore. I don’t know who
they were, but I can very distinctly see, seated at the grand table and
facing the rest of us, Mr. Emerson, supernaturally grave, unsmiling;
Mr. Whittier, grave, lovely, his beautiful spirit shining out of his
face; Mr. Longfellow, with his silken white hair and his benignant face;
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, flashing smiles and affection and all good-
fellowship everywhere like a rose-diamond whose facets are being turned
toward the light first one way and then another–a charming man, and
always fascinating, whether he was talking or whether he was sitting
still (what he would call still, but what would be more or less motion to
other people). I can see those figures with entire distinctness across
this abyss of time.
One other feature is clear–Willie Winter (for these past thousand years
dramatic editor of the New York Tribune, and still occupying that high
post in his old age) was there. He was much younger then than he is now,
and he showed ‘it. It was always a pleasure to me to see Willie Winter
at a banquet. During a matter of twenty years I was seldom at a banquet
where Willie Winter was not also present, and where he did not read a
charming poem written for the occasion. He did it this time, and it was
up to standard: dainty, happy, choicely phrased, and as good to listen to
as music, and sounding exactly as if it was pouring unprepared out of
heart and brain.
Now at that point ends all that was pleasurable about that notable
celebration of Mr. Whittier’s seventieth birthday–because I got up at
that point and followed Winter, with what I have no doubt I supposed
would be the gem of the evening–the gay oration above quoted from the
Boston paper. I had written it all out the day before and had perfectly
memorized it, and I stood up there at my genial and happy and self-
satisfied ease, and began to deliver it. Those majestic guests; that row
of venerable and still active volcanoes, listened; as did everybody else
in the house, with attentive interest. Well, I delivered myself of–
we’ll say the first two hundred words of my speech. I was expecting no
returns from that part of the speech, but this was not the case as
regarded the rest of it. I arrived now at the dialogue: “The old miner
said, ‘You are the fourth, I’m going to move.’ ‘The fourth what?’ said
I. He answered, ‘The fourth littery man that has been here in twenty-
four hours. I am going to move.’ ‘Why, you don’t tell me;’ said I.
‘Who were the others?’ “Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Oliver Wendell
Holmes, consound the lot–‘”
Now, then, the house’s attention continued, but the expression of
interest in the faces turned to a sort of black frost. I wondered what
the trouble was. I didn’t know. I went on, but with difficulty–
I struggled along, and entered upon that miner’s fearful description of
the bogus Emerson, the bogus Holmes, the bogus Longfellow, always hoping
–but with a gradually perishing hope that somebody–would laugh, or that
somebody would at least smile, but nobody did. I didn’t know enough to
give it up and sit down, I was too new to public speaking, and so I went
on with this awful performance, and carried it clear through to the end,
in front of a body of people who seemed turned to stone with horror.
It was the sort of expression their faces would have worn if I had been