in twenty-four hours. I am going to move.' 'Why, you don't tell me;'
said I. 'Who were the others?' 'Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Oliver
Wendell Holmes, consound the lot--'"

Now, then, the house's attention continued, but the expression of
interest in the faces turned to a sort of black frost. I wondered what
the trouble was. I didn't know. I went on, but with difficulty
--I struggled along, and entered upon that miner's fearful description of
the bogus Emerson, the bogus Holmes, the bogus Longfellow, always hoping
--but with a gradually perishing hope that somebody--would laugh, or that
somebody would at least smile, but nobody did. I didn't know enough to
give it up and sit down, I was too new to public speaking, and so I went
on with this awful performance, and carried it clear through to the end,
in front of a body of people who seemed turned to stone with horror.
It was the sort of expression their faces would have worn if I had been
making these remarks about the Deity and the rest of the Trinity; there
is no milder way, in which to describe the petrified condition and the
ghastly expression of those people.

When I sat down it was with a heart which had long ceased to beat.
I shall never be as dead again as I was then. I shall never be as
miserable again as I was then. I speak now as one who doesn't know what
the condition of things may be in the next world, but in this one I shall
never be as wretched again as I was then. Howells, who was near me,
tried to say a comforting word, but couldn't get beyond a gasp. There
was no use--he understood the whole size of the disaster. He had good
intentions, but the words froze before they could get out. It was an
atmosphere that would freeze anything. If Benvenuto Cellini's salamander
had been in that place he would not have survived to be put into
Cellini's autobiography. There was a frightful pause. There was an