Ladies, this young man is one of my most famous descendants. He has
been a man of many adventures, and he has been hanged once, which,
far from making him undesirable as an acquaintance, has served merely
to render him harmless, and therefore a safe person to know. Now, my
son, go ahead and speak your piece."

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 Recamier.

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

"I wish I could make up my mind as to whether he is outrageously