as he feared, would not adjust themselves one with another.  He had learned the headings of his speech,—­so that one heading might follow the other, and nothing be forgotten.  And he had learned verbatim the words which he intended to utter under each heading,—­with a hope that if any one compact part should be destroyed or injured in its compactness by treachery of memory, or by the course of the debate, each other compact part might be there in its entirety, ready for use;—­or at least so many of the compact parts as treachery of memory and the accidents of the debate might leave to him; so that his speech might be like a vessel, watertight in its various compartments, that would float by the buoyancy of its stern and bow, even though the hold should be waterlogged.  But this use of his composed words, even though he should be able to carry it through, would not complete his work;—­for it would be his duty to answer in some sort those who had gone before him, and in order to do this he must be able to insert, without any prearrangement of words or ideas, little intercalatory parts between those compact masses of argument with which he had been occupying himself for many laborious hours.  As he looked round upon the House and perceived that everything was dim before him, that all his original awe of the House had returned, and with it a present quaking fear that made him feel the pulsations of his own heart, he became painfully aware that the task he had prepared for himself was too great.  He should, on this the occasion of his rising to his maiden legs, have either prepared for himself a short general speech, which could indeed have done little for his credit in the House, but which might have served to carry off the novelty of the thing, and have introduced him to the sound of his own voice within those walls,—­or he should have trusted to what his wit and spirit would produce for him on the spur of the moment, and not have burdened himself with a huge exercise of memory.  During the presentation of a few petitions he tried to repeat to himself the first of his compact parts,—­a compact part on which, as it might certainly be brought into use let the debate have gone as it might, he had expended great care.  He had flattered himself that there was something of real strength in his words as he repeated them to himself in the comfortable seclusion of his own room, and he had made them so ready to his tongue that he thought it to be impossible that he should forget even an intonation.  Now he found that he could not remember the first phrases without unloosing and looking at a small roll of paper which he held furtively in his hand.  What was the good of looking at it?  He would forget it again in the next moment.  He had intended to satisfy the most eager of his friends, and to astound his opponents.  As it was, no one would be satisfied,—­and none astounded but they who had trusted in him.