those days in that region a petty lecture-hall to be secured on
terms as moderate as the funds left at our disposal by the
irrepressible question of the maintenance of five small Saltrams--I
include the mother--and one large one. By the time the Saltrams,
of different sizes, were all maintained we had pretty well poured
out the oil that might have lubricated the machinery for enabling
the most original of men to appear to maintain them.

It was I, the other time, who had been forced into the breach,
standing up there for an odious lamplit moment to explain to half a
dozen thin benches, where earnest brows were virtuously void of
anything so cynical as a suspicion, that we couldn't so much as put
a finger on Mr. Saltram. There was nothing to plead but that our
scouts had been out from the early hours and that we were afraid
that on one of his walks abroad--he took one, for meditation,
whenever he was to address such a company--some accident had
disabled or delayed him. The meditative walks were a fiction, for
he never, that any one could discover, prepared anything but a
magnificent prospectus; hence his circulars and programmes, of
which I possess an almost complete collection, are the solemn
ghosts of generations never born. I put the case, as it seemed to
me, at the best; but I admit I had been angry, and Kent Mulville
was shocked at my want of public optimism. This time therefore I
left the excuses to his more practised patience, only relieving
myself in response to a direct appeal from a young lady next whom,
in the hall, I found myself sitting. My position was an accident,
but if it had been calculated the reason would scarce have eluded
an observer of the fact that no one else in the room had an
approach to an appearance. Our philosopher's "tail" was deplorably
limp. This visitor was the only person who looked at her ease, who