them as his equals. But, in fact, he chose every
word, as if not one of them knew anything. He explained,
as if it were rather more simple to explain than to take
for granted. But he explained as if, were they talking,
they might be explaining to him. He led them from point
to point,--oh! so much more clearly than I have been
leading you,--till, as their mouths dropped a little open
in their eager interest, and their lids forgot to wink in
their gaze upon his face, and so their eyebrows seemed a
little lifted in curiosity,--till, I say, each man felt
as if he were himself the inventor, who had bridged
difficulty after difficulty; as if, indeed, the whole
were too simple to be called difficult or complicated.
The only wonder was that the Board of Longitude, or the
Emperor Napoleon, or the Smithsonian, or somebody, had
not sent this little planet on its voyage of blessing
long before. Not a syllable that you would have called
rhetoric, not a word that you would have thought
prepared; and then Brannan sat down.

That was Ben Brannan's way. For my part, I like it
better than eloquence.

Then I got up again. We would answer any questions,
I said. We represented people who were eager to go
forward with this work. (Alas! except Q., all of those
represented were on the stage.) We could not go forward
without the general assistance of the community. It was
not an enterprise which the government could be asked to
favor. It was not an enterprise which would yield