growing higher all the time. We played it well, but not as well as you
see it here, for you see it done by practically trained professionals.

I was especially interested in the scene which we have just had, for
Miles Hendon was my part. I did it as well as a person could who never
remembered his part. The children all knew their parts. They did not
mind if I did not know mine. I could thread a needle nearly as well as
the player did whom you saw to-day. The words of my part I could supply
on the spot. The words of the song that Miles Hendon sang here I did not
catch. But I was great in that song.

[Then Mr. Clemens hummed a bit of doggerel that the reporter
made out as this:

"There was a woman in her town,
She loved her husband well,
But another man just twice as well."

"How is that?" demanded Mr. Clemens. Then resuming]

It was so fresh and enjoyable to make up a new set of words each time
that I played the part.

If I had a thousand citizens in front of me, I would like to give them
information, but you children already know all that I have found out
about the Educational Alliance. It's like a man living within thirty
miles of Vesuvius and never knowing about a volcano. It's like living
for a lifetime in Buffalo, eighteen miles from Niagara, and never going
to see the Falls. So I had lived in New York and knew nothing about the
Educational Alliance.