The proceedings at the ma.s.s meeting were to begin at eight o"clock. At half-past seven I went to the telegraph office, and sent the following despatch to the Wilmington papers, fearing the office might be closed when the meeting adjourned:
"DOVER, ---- --, 18--: A tremendous ma.s.s meeting was held here to-night.
The utmost enthusiasm was displayed by the crowd. Effective speeches were made by several prominent gentlemen, among them the eloquent young orator Mr. Max Adeler, whose spirited remarks, interspersed with sparkling anecdote, provoked uproarious applause. Dover is good for five hundred majority, and perhaps a thousand."
At eight o"clock a very large crowd really did a.s.semble in front of the porch of one of the hotels. The speakers were placed upon the balcony, which was but a few feet above the pavement, and there was also a number of persons connected with the various political clubs of the town. I felt somewhat nervous; but I was tolerably certain I could speak my piece acceptably, even with the poetry torn out of the introduction and the number two story sacrificed. I took a seat upon the porch and waited while the band played a spirited air or two. It grieved me to perceive that the band stood directly in front of us upon the pavement, the cold-eyed drummer occupying a favorable position for staring at me.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
The chairman began with a short speech in which he went over almost precisely the ground covered by my introduction; and as that portion of my oration was already reduced to a fragment by the use of the verses, I quietly resolved to begin, when my turn came, with point number two.
The chairman introduced to the crowd Mr. Keyser, who was received with cheers. He was a ready speaker, and he began, to my deep regret, by telling in capital style my story number three, after which he used up some of my number six arguments, and concluded with the remark that it was not his purpose to occupy the attention of the meeting for any length of time, because the executive committee in Wilmington had sent an eloquent orator who was now upon the platform and would present the cause of the party in a manner which he could not hope to approach.
Mr. Keyser then sat down, and Mr. Schwartz was introduced. Mr. Schwartz observed that it was hardly worth while for him to attempt to make anything like a speech, because the gentleman from New Castle had come down on purpose to discuss the issues of the campaign, and the audience, of course, was anxious to hear him. Mr. Schwartz would only tell a little story which seemed to ill.u.s.trate a point he wished to make, and he thereupon related my anecdote number seven, making it appear that he was the bosom friend of Commodore Scudder and an acquaintance of the man who made the gun. The point ill.u.s.trated I was shocked to find was almost precisely that which I had attached to my story number seven. The situation began to have a serious appearance.
Here, at one fell swoop, two of my best stories and three of my sets of arguments were swept off into utter uselessness.
When Schwartz withdrew, a man named Krumbauer was brought forward.
Krumbauer was a German, and the chairman announced that he would speak in that language for the benefit of those persons in the audience to whom the tongue was pleasantly familiar. Krumbauer went ahead, and the crowd received his remarks with roars of laughter. After one particularly exuberant outburst of merriment, I asked the man who sat next to me, and who seemed deeply interested in the story,
"What was that little joke of Krumbauer"s? It must have been first rate."
"So it was," he said. "It was about a Dutchman up in Berks county, Penna., who got mixed up in his dates."
"What dates?" I gasped, in awful apprehension.
"Why, his Fourths of July, you know. Got seven or eight years in arrears and tried to make them all up at once. Good, wasn"t it?"
"Good? I should think so; ha! ha! My very best story, as I"m a sinner!"
It was awfully bad. I could have strangled Krumbauer and then chopped him into bits. The ground seemed slipping away beneath me; there was the merest skeleton of a speech left. But I determined to take that and do my best, trusting to luck for a happy result.
But my turn had not yet come. Mr. Wilson was dragged out next, and I thought I perceived a demoniac smile steal over the countenance of the cymbal player as Wilson said he was too hoa.r.s.e to say much; he would leave the heavy work for the brilliant young orator who was here from New Castle. He would skim rapidly over the ground and then retire. He did. Wilson rapidly skimmed all the cream off of my arguments numbers two, five and six, and wound up by offering the whole of my number four argument. My hair fairly stood on end when Wilson bowed and left the stand. What on earth was I to do now? Not an argument left to stand upon; all my anecdotes gone but two, and my mind in such a condition of frenzied bewilderment that it seemed as if there was not another available argument or suggestion or hint or anecdote remaining in the entire universe. In an agony of despair, I turned to the man next to me and asked him if I would have to follow Wilson.
He said it was his turn now.
"And what are you going to say?" I demanded, suspiciously.
"Oh, nothing," he replied--"nothing at all. I want to leave room for you. I"ll just tell a little story or so, to amuse them, and then sit down."
"What story, for instance?" I asked.
"Oh, nothing, nothing; only a little yarn I happen to remember about a farmer who married a woman who said she could cut four cords of wood, when she couldn"t."
My worst fears were realized. I turned to the man next to me, and said, with suppressed emotion,
"May I ask your name, my friend?"
He said his name was Gumbs.
"May I inquire what your Christian name is?"
He said it was William Henry.
"Well, William Henry Gumbs," I exclaimed, "gaze at me! Do I look like a man who would slay a human being in cold blood?"
"Hm-m-m, n-no; you don"t," he replied, with an air of critical consideration.
"But I AM!" said I, fiercely--"I AM; and I tell you now that if you undertake to relate that anecdote about the farmer"s wife I will blow you into eternity without a moment"s warning; I will, by George!"
Mr. Gumbs instantly jumped up, placed his hand on the railing of the porch, and got over suddenly into the crowd. He stood there pointing me out to the bystanders, and doubtless advancing the theory that I was an original kind of a lunatic, who might be expected to have at any moment a fit which would be interesting when studied from a distance.
The chairman looked around, intending to call upon my friend Mr. Gumbs; but not perceiving him, he came to me and said:
"Now is your chance, sir; splendid opportunity; crowd worked up to just the proper pitch. We have paved the way for you; go in and do your best."
"Oh yes; but hold on for a few moments, will you? I can"t speak now; the fact is I am not quite ready. Run out some other man."
"Haven"t got another man. Kept you for the last purposely, and the crowd is waiting. Come ahead and pitch in, and give it to "em hot and heavy."
It was very easy for him to say "give it to them," but I had nothing to give. Beautifully they paved the way for me! Nicely they had worked up the crowd to the proper pitch! Here I was in a condition of frantic despair, with a crowd of one thousand people expecting a brilliant oration from me who had not a thing in my mind but a beggarly story about a fire-extinguisher and a worse one about a farmer"s wife. I groaned in spirit and wished I had been born far away in some distant clime among savages who knew not of ma.s.s meetings, and whose language contained such a small number of words that speech-making was impossible.
But the chairman was determined. He seized me by the arm and fairly dragged me to the front. He introduced me to the crowd in flattering, and I may say outrageously ridiculous, terms, and then whispering in my ear, "Hit "em hard, old fellow, hit "em hard," he sat down.
The crowd received me with three hearty cheers. As I heard them I began to feel dizzy. The audience seemed to swim around and to increase tenfold in size. By a resolute effort I recovered my self-possession partially, and determined to begin. I could not think of anything but the two stories, and I resolved to tell them as well as I could. I said,
"Fellow-citizens: It is so late now that I will not attempt to make a speech to you." (Cries of "Yes!" "Go ahead!" "Never mind the time!"
etc., etc.) Elevating my voice, I repeated: "I say it is so late now that I can"t make a speech as I intended on account of its being so late that the speech which I intended to make would keep you here too late if I made it as I intended to. So I will tell you a story about a man who bought a patent fire-extinguisher which was warranted to split four cords of wood a day; so he set fire to his house to try her, and--No, it was his wife who was warranted to split four cords of wood--I got it wrong; and when the flames obtained full headway, he found she could only split two cords and a half, and it made him--What I mean is that the farmer, when he bought the exting--courted her, that is, she said she could set fire to the house, and when he tried her, she collapsed the first time--the extinguisher did, and he wanted a divorce because his house--Oh, hang it, fellow-citizens, you understand that this man, or farmer, rather, bought a--I should say courted a--that is, a fire-ex--" (Desperately.) "Fellow-citizens! IF ANY MAN SHOOTS THE AMERICAN FLAG, PULL HIM DOWN UPON THE SPOT; BUT AS FOR ME, GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH!"
[Ill.u.s.tration]
As I shouted this out at the top of my voice, in an ecstasy of confusion, a wild, tumultuous yell of laughter came up from the crowd. I paused for a second beneath the spell of that cold eye in the band, and then, dashing through the throng at the back of the porch, I rushed down the street to the depot, with the shouts of the crowd and the uproarious music of the band ringing in my ears. I got upon a freight train, gave the engineer five dollars to take me along on the locomotive, and spent the night riding to New Castle.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE WEDDING-DAY--ENORMOUS EXCITEMENT IN THE VILLAGE--PREPARATIONS FOR THE EVENT--THE CONDUCT OF BOB PARKER--THE CEREMONY AT THE CHURCH AND THE COMPANY AT MAGRUDER"S--A LAST LOOK AT SOME OLD FRIENDS--DEPARTURE OF THE BRIDE AND GROOM--SOME UNCOMMONLY SOLEMN REFLECTIONS, AND THEN THE END.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
Yesterday was the day of the wedding.
I suppose no one can hope to describe accurately the sensation that is created by such an event in a little community like ours. It has supplied the ladies of the village with material for discussion for several weeks past, and the extraordinary interest manifested in it has constantly grown stronger until it culminated in a blaze of excitement which made calmness upon the part of any New Castilian upon the great day a wholly impossible condition. My own wife has introduced the subject in her conversation with me at every available opportunity; and when I have grown weary of hearing about the preparations for the wedding, about the purchases made by the Magruders for Bessie, about the presents given to the bride by her friends, about the future prospects of the pair, and about other matrimonial things innumerable, the excellent partner of my joys, still with unabated enthusiasm, has turned from so dull a listener, and seizing her bonnet and shawl, has darted off to visit Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Hopkins, and has found them eager to partic.i.p.ate in conversation upon these subjects. During the past month this sympathetic woman has called at Magruder"s at least three times a day to ascertain the latest facts respecting the situation, and to give advice and a.s.sistance to the busy workers who have been preparing the mult.i.tude of articles which a girl must have before she is married.
Every woman in the village was familiar, long ago, with the minutest details of the arrangements, and all of them were so deeply absorbed in the preparations and in contemplation of the approaching catastrophe that they cared for nothing else. If there had been revolutions, if thrones had tottered to their fall, if hurricanes had swept over the land and the nations had been stricken by the scourge, I verily believe that these devoted women of New Castle would have regarded these calamities with steadfast composure, and would have excluded them from a place in the social debates wherein the wedding of Bessie Magruder was the one great subject of discussion.