The good old spirit sat down, and the scruples of the objectors having
thus been satisfied, Captain Kidd began.

"Now that I know you all," he remarked, as pleasantly as he could under
the circumstances, "I feel that I can speak more freely, and certainly
with a great deal less embarrassment than if I were addressing a gathering
of entire strangers. I am not much of a hand at speaking, and have always
felt somewhat nonplussed at finding myself in a position of this nature.
In my whole career I never experienced but one irresistible impulse to
make a public address of any length, and that was upon that unhappy
occasion to which the greatest and grandest of my great-grandmothers has
alluded, and that only as the chain by which I was suspended in mid-air
tightened about my vocal chords. At that moment I could have talked
impromptu for a year, so fast and numerously did thoughts of the uttermost
import surge upward into my brain; but circumstances over which I had no
control prevented the utterance of those thoughts, and that speech is
therefore lost to the world."

"He has the gift of continuity," observed Madame Récamier.

"Ought to be in the United States Senate," smiled Elizabeth.

"I wish I could make up my mind as to whether he is outrageously handsome
or desperately ugly," remarked Helen of Troy. "He fascinates me, but
whether it is the fascination of liking or of horror I can't tell, and
it's quite important."

"Ladies," resumed the captain, his uneasiness increasing as he came to the
point, "I am but the agent of your respective husbands, _fiancés_, and
other masculine guardians. The gentlemen who were previously the tenants