The curtain drew up--shrivelled to the ceiling: the bright lights, the long room, the gay throng, burst upon us.

I thought of the black-beetles, the old boxes, the worm-eaten bureau.

I said my say badly; but I said it.

That first speech was the difficulty; it revealed to me this fact, that it was not the crowd I feared so much as my own voice.

Foreigners and strangers, the crowd were nothing to me.