"'You are far from being a bad man--' Signature, 'Oscar B. Wilder.'"

At this point the house lit upon the idea of taking the eight words out
of the Chairman's hands. He was not unthankful for that. Thenceforward
he held up each note in its turn and waited. The house droned out the
eight words in a massed and measured and musical deep volume of sound
(with a daringly close resemblance to a well-known church chant)--"You
are f-a-r from being a b-a-a-a-d man." Then the Chair said, "Signature,
'Archibald Wilcox.'" And so on, and so on, name after name, and
everybody had an increasingly and gloriously good time except the
wretched Nineteen. Now and then, when a particularly shining name was
called, the house made the Chair wait while it chanted the whole of the
test-remark from the beginning to the closing words, "And go to hell or
Hadleyburg--try and make it the for-or-m-e-r!" and in these special cases
they added a grand and agonised and imposing "A-a-a-a-_men_!"

The list dwindled, dwindled, dwindled, poor old Richards keeping tally of
the count, wincing when a name resembling his own was pronounced, and
waiting in miserable suspense for the time to come when it would be his
humiliating privilege to rise with Mary and finish his plea, which he was
intending to word thus: ". . . for until now we have never done any wrong
thing, but have gone our humble way unreproached. We are very poor, we
are old, and, have no chick nor child to help us; we were sorely tempted,
and we fell. It was my purpose when I got up before to make confession
and beg that my name might not be read out in this public place, for it
seemed to us that we could not bear it; but I was prevented. It was
just; it was our place to suffer with the rest. It has been hard for us.
It is the first time we have ever heard our name fall from any one's
lips--sullied. Be merciful--for the sake or the better days; make our