Perry Thomas still had his speech to deliver. He hovered around the
rocking-chair in which they had enthroned me, and with one hand he kept
clutching violently at his throat as though he were suppressing his
eloquence by muscular effort. His repeated coughing seemed a constant
warning that at any moment he might be vanquished in the struggle for
becoming silence. There was a longing light in his eyes and a look of
appeal whenever our glances met. My position was embarrassing. He
knew that I realized his predicament, but how could I interrupt the
kindly demonstrations of the old friends who pressed about me, to
announce that the local orator had a formal address of welcome that was
as yet unspoken? And an opportunity like this might never again occur
in Perry's life! Here were gathered not only the people of the
village, but of the valley. His words would fall not alone on the ears
of a few choice spirits of the store forum, or the scoffing pedants of
the literary society, for crowded into that little room were old men
whose years would give weight to the declaration that it was the
greatest talking they had ever heard; were young children, who in after
years, when a neglected gravestone was toppling over all that was left
of the orator, would still speak of the wonders of his eloquence; were
comely women to whom the household was the world and the household task
the life's work, but who could now for the moment lift their bent forms
and have their dulled eyes turned to higher and better things.
Moreover, there were in that room a score of deep eyes that could not
but quicken at the sight of a slender, manly figure, clad in scholastic
black, of a thin, earnest face, with beetled brows and a classic
forehead from which swept waves of black hair. Little wonder Perry was
restless under restraint! Little wonder he grew more melancholy and
coughed louder and louder, as the light without faded away, and the
faces within were dimmed in the shadow!