Then he allowed that they were losing money on subscriptions and they really needed a bookkeeper. This was followed by a piece he wrote under the pseudonym Lucy Thomas about a man with a prosthetic limb . And then he apologized because they usually have plants in the audience to ask him to read something, but that they hadn't been able to do that for Boston as he didn't know that many people. For a moment Eggers looked startled by the request, but he quickly recovered. He corrects himself.
Eggers replies, and waits for the guy to come up.
I'm surprised that without much proding the guy walks up to join Eggers at the podium. Eggers stops him. There's a hurried discussion, and then the reader tries again, but only really gets the song when the refrain comes at the end. They continue, with the person reading the Toph parts, but even then Eggers can't resist criticizing him for looking at his own copy of the book while there's a copy on the podium they can both use. The reader tries again and gets it.