continued to renew in utter despite of time. The young man's hand
rested affectionately on his shoulder. A few moments sufficed to
enable the former to renew his narrative.

"I was stunned but not crushed by this event. I knew my own resources.
I recollected a similar anecdote of Sheridan; of his first attempt
and wretched failure. I, too, felt that 'I had it in me,' and though
I did not express, I made the same resolution, that 'I would bring
it out.' But Sheridan and myself failed from different causes,
though I did not understand this at that time. He had a degree of
hardihood which I had not; and he utterly lacked my sensibilities.
The very intenseness of my ambition; the extent of my expectation;
the elevated estimate which I had made of my own profession; of
its exactions; and, again, of what was expected from me; were all
so many obstacles to my success. I did not so esteem them, then; and
after renewing my studies in private, my exercises of expression and
manner, and going through a harder course of drilling, I repeated
the attempt to suffer a repetition of the failure. I did not
again faint, but I was speechless. I not only lost the power of
utterance, but I lost the corresponding faculty of sight. My eyes
were completely dazed and confounded. The objects of sight around
me were as crowded and confused as the far, dim ranges of figures,
tribes upon tribes, and legions upon legions, which struggle
in obscurity and distance, in any one of the begrimed and blurred
pictures of Martin's Pandemonium. My second failure was a more
enfeebling disaster than the first. The first procured me the
sympathy of my audience, the last exposed me to its ridicule."

Again the old man paused. By this time, the youth had got one of
his arms about the neck of the speaker, and had taken one of his