'My friends, you were drawn here to-night by the extravagantly worded
and outlandish representations of a poster which promised you only one
single thing, namely, that you should behold a Great Traveling Humbug.
Nothing could be more honest, though some things might be more
straightforward. Force of circumstances compels me this evening to
represent the Great Traveling Humbug you came to see. I am this evening
the greatest of humbugs. I travel. A week ago, I traveled into this
village with the laudable intention of giving you a sensible lecture on
EURIPIDES, a historical personage of whom some of you may have heard. I
traveled over to this hall on the evening of my lecture, and spoke to a
beggarly array of empty seats. To-morrow morning, I intend to travel to
church in your beautiful village, repent of my sins, and on Monday
travel home to New York, where I shall at once take measures to rid
myself of the title I wear this evening, by earning my bread in the
old-fashioned way, by the sweat of my brow.

'Humbug, ladies and gentlemen, is a pill not at all disagreeable to
take, when gilded carefully. My pill has been prepared by the hand of a
novice, and you have swallowed it with your eyes open. May it benefit
you!'

Symptoms of a disturbance immediately became manifest, when my editorial
angel arose and spread his wings over the troubled audience.

'People of Tyre,' said he, 'the exhibition of the Great Humbug Troupe
is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting and least objectionable
that ever appeared in our village. It remains for us to make it
instructive. I propose that we give three cheers for our brave
entertainer,--hip, hip,