It is true that there was not much to ignore, and, after all, it has now to be recorded to their credit that they did unreservedly give Theophilus Londonderry his chance.

By what quaintness of accident he could not imagine, he suddenly found himself invited to lecture before them.

The invitation read something like a command, and there seemed to be an implication that if all were satisfactory, he might thus earn the right of acknowledging the patronage of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Coalchester.
Theophilus Londonderry's subject, therefore, was "Walt Whitman,"-- a name which conveyed no offence to the Committee, for the simple reason that it conveyed nothing.

It was a strange and humorous thing for the young man to think of, that his was to be the first human voice that had spoken that name of the future aloud in Coalchester.

As he rose to give his paper, he pronounced its title slowly, with his full carrying voice, and allowed the strange new name to roll away in menacing echoes through the old Lyceum: "W-a-l-t W-h-i-t-m-a-n." Even yet no one saw the coming doom, heard not the voice that tolled a funeral bell through all Lyceums and other haunted houses of dead learning.