Finally, a trombone player caught sight of their gestures, and he attracted the leader’s attention to the fact that something was wrong by giving him a prod in the stomach with the slide of his trombone.  The leader hesitated, stopped, and then faced about to the speakers’ stand.  Some of the band paused, while others kept right on with “Daisy Bell.”

Mr. Snider smiled, bowed, and I suppose, with a desire to make himself agreeable, thrust out his hands and applauded.  At any rate, the band-master mistook the meaning of it, for he silenced those who were still playing, leaned forward to say something to them all, waved his cornet, and started them once more on “Razzle Dazzle.”  He had thought that Mr. Snider preferred that to “Daisy Bell,” and wanted it repeated.  Then they had to begin the hand-wavings and gesticulations all over again.  Nothing could stop them this time until Deacon Chick descended from the stand, went over to the band-master, tapped him on the shoulder, and whispered excitedly in his ear.  At last they got them all quieted down, except one tremendous man who sat on two stools, playing an enormous bass-horn.  For quite two minutes after the others had ceased he went on with his:  “Um-pah!  Um-pah!  Um-pah!”

“The boys don’t get a chance like this more’n once a year,” said a man who was standing beside me, “and you bet they are going to give J. Harvey his money’s worth!”

He was a sharp-faced man, a farmer evidently, not more than thirty-five years old.  He had bright black eyes, which he kept fixed constantly on Mr. Bowditch and Mr. Snider.

Finally, Mr. Snider got his chance to speak.  He said he would call them all “Friends” as that suited them better than “Ladies and Gentlemen.”  He told how sorry he was because the Professor had been called away by the illness of a relative.  Then he told what a great inventor the Professor was, and how he was even more remarkable for doing good.  For this invention was one which would do good to so many people.

This led Mr. Snider up to his favorite subject, and he began to speak on doing good and being good.  The black-eyed man beside me began to utter little groans.

“I knew I was in for J. Harvey Bowditch,” he said under his breath, “and I thought that was enough punishment for one day.”

At last Mr. Snider got back to the gold company.  “From the earliest times, my friends, scientists have known of the existence of gold in sea-water.  Together with other metals,—­silver, platinum, and so on, there is a great amount of gold in sea-water.  It is in tiny particles, not so big as the point of a needle.  There it is,—­but how shall it be got together?  How shall it be extracted from the water?  Aristotle tried to discover a method.  He failed.  Diogenes Laertius tried.  He failed.  Sir Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin,—­they tried.  And they failed.  Professor Von Bieberstein has succeeded.  And you are to see this method demonstrated today, and you, my friends, are to benefit by this discovery.”