making these remarks about the Deity and the rest of the Trinity; there
is no milder way, in which to describe the petrified condition and the
ghastly expression of those people.
When I sat down it was with a heart which had long ceased to beat.
I shall never be as dead again as I was then. I shall never be as
miserable again as I was then. I speak now as one who doesn’t know what
the condition of things may be in the next world, but in this one I shall
never be as wretched again as I was then. Howells, who was near me,
tried to say a comforting word, but couldn’t get beyond a gasp. There
was no use–he understood the whole size of the disaster. He had good
intentions, but the words froze before they could get out. It was an
atmosphere that would freeze anything. If Benvenuto Cellini’s salamander
had been in that place he would not have survived to be put into
Cellini’s autobiography. There was a frightful pause. There was an
awful silence, a desolating silence. Then the next man on the list had
to get up–there was no help for it. That was Bishop–Bishop had just
burst handsomely upon the world with a most acceptable novel, which had
appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, a place which would make any novel
respectable and any author noteworthy. In this case the novel itself was
recognized as being, without extraneous help, respectable. Bishop was
away up in the public favor, and he was an object of high interest,
consequently there was a sort of national expectancy in the air; we may
say our American millions were standing, from Maine to Texas and from
Alaska to Florida, holding their breath, their lips parted, their hands
ready to applaud, when Bishop should get up on that occasion, and for the
first time in his life speak in public. It was under these damaging
conditions that he got up to “make good,” as the vulgar say. I had
spoken several times before, and that is the reason why I was able to go
on without dying in my tracks, as I ought to have done–but Bishop had
had no experience. He was up facing those awful deities–facing those
other people, those strangers–facing human beings for the first time in
his life, with a speech to utter. No doubt it was well packed away in
his memory, no doubt it was fresh and usable, until I had been heard
from. I suppose that after that, and under the smothering pall of that
dreary silence, it began to waste away and disappear out of his head like
the rags breaking from the edge of a fog, and presently there wasn’t any
fog left. He didn’t go on–he didn’t last long. It was not many
sentence’s after his first before he began to hesitate, and break, and
lose his grip, and totter, and wobble, and at last he slumped down in a
limp and mushy pile.
Well, the programme for the occasion was probably not more than one-
third finished, but it ended there. Nobody rose. The next man hadn’t
strength enough to get up, and everybody looked so dazed, so stupefied,
paralyzed; it was impossible for anybody to do anything, or even try.
Nothing could go on in that strange atmosphere. Howells mournfully, and
without words, hitched himself to Bishop and me and supported us out of
the room. It was very kind–he was most generous. He towed us tottering
away into same room in that building, and we sat down there. I don’t
know what my remark was now, but I know the nature of it. It was the
kind of remark you make when you know that nothing in the world can help
your case. But Howells was honest–he had to say the heart-breaking
things he did say: that there was no help for this calamity, this
shipwreck, this cataclysm; that this was the most disastrous thing that
had ever happened in anybody’s history–and then he added, “That is, for
you–and consider what you have done for Bishop. It is bad enough in
your case, you deserve, to suffer. You have committed this crime, and