The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-02 00:00:00

SEPTEMBER.

OCTOBER.
Coventry .............. 6 Lincoln Autumn 20
Bedford ............... 6 Kelso
Caledonian Hunt ...... 7 Gloucester
Newmarket 8. 0.. .. .... 12 Newmarket, Houghton 226
- -

NOVEMBER.
Worcester ............. 3 I Shrewsbury Autumn.... 16
IRISH.
SEFTEMI3En.
Listowel .21 1 I Jenkinstown Park 23
.. 21
Limerick

0 CTonzit.

Curragh .....

20

Horrors of Speech-making at a Civic Dinner.

While I was thus amiably occupied in criticising my
fellow-guests, the mayor had got up to propose another
toast, and listening rather inattentively to the first sentence
or two, I soon became sensible of a drift in his Worship's
remarks that made me glance apprehensively towards Ser-
geant Wilkins. "Yes," grumbled that gruff petsonage,
shoving a decanter of port towards me, "it is your turn
next ;" and seeing in my face, I suppose, the consternation
of a wholly unpractised orator, he kindly added—" It is
nothing. A mere acknowledgment will answer the purpose.
The less you say, the better they will like it." That being
the case, I suggested that perhaps they would like it best
it I said nothing at all. But the sergeant shook his head.
Now, on first receiving the mayor's invitation to dinner,
it had occurred to me that I might possibly be
brought into my present predicament; but I had
dismissed the idea from my mind as too disagreeable
to he entertained, and, moreover, as no alien from my dis-
position and character that Fate surely could not keep such
a misfortune in store for me. If nothing else prevented, an
earthquake or the crack of doom would certainly interfere
before I need rise to speak. Yet here was the mayor getting
on inexorably—and, indeed, I heartily wished that he might
get on and on for ever, and of his wordy wanderings find
no end. If the gentle reader, my kindest friend and closest
confidant, deigns to desire it, I can impart to him my own
experience as a public speaker quite as indifferently as if it
concerned another person. Indeed, it does concern another,
or a mere spectral phenomenon, for it was not I, in my pro-
per and natural self, that sat there at table or subsequently
rose to speak. At the moment. then, if the choice had
been offered me whether the mayor should let off a
speech at my head or a pistol, I should unhesitatingly
have taken the latter alternative. I had really nothing
to say, not an idea in my head, nor, which was a
great deal worse, any flowing words or embroidered
sentences in which to dress out that empty Nothing, and
give it a cunning aspect of intelligence, such as might last
the poor vactity the little time it had to live. But time
pressed; the mayor brought his remarks, affectionately
eulogistic of the United States, and highly complimentary
to their distinguished representative at the table, to a close,
amid a vast deal of cheering; and the band struck up
"Hail Columbia," I believe, though it might have been
"Old Hundred," or "God Save the Queen" over again,
for anything that I should have known or cared. When
the music ceased, there was an intensely disagreeable
instant, during which I seemed to rend away and fling off
the habit of a lifetime, and lose, still void of ideas, but
with preternatural composure, to make a speech. 'rho
guests rattled on the table, and cried " Hear I' most voci-
ferously, as if now, at length, in this foolish and idly gar-
rulous world, had come the long-expected moment when
one gold word was to be spoken ; and in that imminent
crisis I caught a glimpse of a little bit of an effusion of in-
ternational sentiment, which it might, and must, and should
do to utter. Well; it was nothing, as the sergeant had
said. What surprised me most was the sound of my own
voice, which I had never before heard at a declamatory
pitch, and which impressed me as belonging to some other
person, who, and lot myself, would be responsible for the
speech : a prodigious consolation and encouragement
under the circumstances I I went on without the
slightest embarrassment, and sat down amid great ap-
plause, wholly undeserved by anything that I had spoken,
but well won from Englishmen, methought, by the new
development of pluck that alone had enabled we to speak
at all.—. Nathaniel Hawthorne's " Our Old Home."