This amusing account of his first experience as a public speaker refers to a banquet at the Lord Mayor's, in London, at which Hawthorne was present as the principal American guest.

(5) distinguished representative: Hawthorne was United States Consul at Liverpool from 1853 to 1857. — (7) Hear! This is an exclamation by which, in English audiences, it is common to direct special attention to what has just been said by a speaker.

1. While I was occupied in criticising my fellowguests, the mayor had got up to propose another toast; and, listening to the first sentence or two, I became sensible of a drift in his remarks that made me glance apprehensively toward Sergeant Wilkins. "Yes," grumbled that gruff personage, "it is your turn next;" and seeing in my face, I suppose, the consternation of a wholly unpracticed orator, he added, "It is nothing. A mere acknowledgment will answer the purpose. The less you say, the better they will like it."

2. That being the case, I suggested that perhaps they would like it best if I said nothing at all. But the Sergeant shook his head. Now, on first receiving the mayor's invitation to dinner, it had occurred to me

that I might possibly be brought into my present predicament; but I had dismissed the idea from my mind as too disagreeable to be entertained, and, moreover, as so alien from my disposition and character that fate surely could not keep such a misfortune in store for me. If nothing else prevented, an earthquake or the crack of doom would certainly interfere before I need rise to speak. Yet here was the mayor getting on inexorably.

3. If the gentle reader, my kindest friend and closest confidant, deigns to desire it, I can impart to him my own experience as a public speaker quite as indifferently as if it concerned another person. Indeed, it does concern another, or a mere spectral phenomenon; for it was not I, in my proper and natural self, that sat there at table, or subsequently rose to speak.

4. At the moment, then, if the choice had been offered me whether the mayor should let off a speech at my head, or a pistol, I should unhesitatingly have taken the latter alternative. I had really nothing to say, not an idea in my head, nor—what was a good deal worse

any flowing words or embroidered sentences in which to dress out that empty nothing and give it a cunning aspect of intelligence, such as might last the poor vacuity the little time it had to live.

5. But time pressed; the mayor brought his remarks, affectionately eulogistic of the United States and complimentary to their distinguished representative at that table, to a close amid a vast deal of cheering; and the band struck up "Hail Columbia," I believe, though it

might have been "Old Hundred" or "God save the Queen" over again, for anything that I should have known or cared.

6. When the music ceased, there was an intensely disagreeable instant, during which I seemed to rend away and fling off the habit of a lifetime, and rose, still void of ideas, but with preternatural composure, to make a speech.

7. The guests rattled on the table, and cried, "Hear!" most vociferously, as if now, at length, in this foolish and idly garrulous world, had come the long-expected moment when one golden word was to be spoken; and in that imminent crisis I caught a glimpse of a little bit of an effusion of international sentiment which it might and must and should do to utter.

8. Well, it was nothing, as the Sergeant had said. What surprised me most was the sound of my own. voice, which I had never before heard at a declamatory pitch, and which impressed me as belonging to some other person, who, and not myself, would be responsible for the speech, -a prodigious consolation and encouragement under the circumstances.

9. I went on without embarrassment, and sat down. amid great applause, wholly undeserved by any thing that I had spoken, but well won from Englishmen, methought, by the new development of pluck that alone had enabled me to speak at all. "It was handsomely done," quoth Sergeant Wilkins; and I felt like a recruit who had been for the first time under fire.

This beautiful "Discourse of Flowers" is an extract from one of a series of essays called "Star Papers," by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887), a native of Connecticut, who is known as one of the most eloquent pulpit-orators that ever lived. In addition to his church work, Mr. Beecher has been largely engaged in lecturing and editing, in which paths he has shown himself one of the most advanced leaders of modern progress. All his utterances reveal subtlety of thought and great felicity of style.

(14) Turner: a celebrated English landscape painter.- (14) Thorwaldsen: a famous Danish sculptor.

1. Happy is the man that loves flowers,

loves them for their own sakes, for their beauty, their associations, the joy they have given and always will give; so that he would sit down among them as friends and companions, if there was not another creature on earth to admire or praise them. But such men need no blessing of mine: they are blessed of God.

2. He who does not appreciate floral beauty is to be pitied like any other man who is born imperfect. It is a misfortune not unlike blindness. But men who contemptuously reject flowers as effeminate, and unworthy of manhood, reveal a certain coarseness.

3. Many persons lose all enjoyment of certain flowers by indulging false associations. There be some who think that no weed can be of interest as a flower. But all flowers are weeds where they grow wildly and abundantly; and somewhere our rarest flowers are somebody's commonest.

4. Generally, also, there is a disposition to undervalue common flowers. There are few that will trouble themselves to examine minutely a blossom that they have seen and neglected from their childhood; and yet, if they would but question such flowers, and commune with them, they would often be surprised to find extreme beauty where it had long been overlooked. A very common flower adds generosity to beauty. It gives joy to the poor, the rude, and to the multitudes who could have no flowers were Nature to charge a price for her blossoms. Is a cloud less beautiful, or a sea or a mountain, because often seen, or seen by millions?

5. The first thing that defies the frost in spring is the chickweed. It will open its floral eye, and look the thermometer in the face at thirty-two degrees. It leads out the snowdrop and the crocus. Its blossom is diminutive and no wonder; for it begins so early in the season, that it has little time to make much of itself. But, as a harbinger and herald, let it not be forgotten.

6. You can not forget, if you would, those golden kisses all over the cheeks of the meadow, queerly called dandelions. There are many greenhouse blossoms less pleasing to us than these; and we have reached through