and cheerful, and ready to talk; ready to talk, and talk all you wanted; in their turn, and out of it.  They were down for six speeches, and they made 42.  The governor and the cabinet and the mayor were down for 42 speeches, and they made 6.  They have splendid grit, the Old Settlers, splendid staying power.  But they do not hear well, and when they see the mayor going through motions which they recognize as the introducing of a speaker, they think they are the one, and they all get up together, and begin to respond, in the most animated way; and the more the mayor gesticulates, and shouts “Sit down!  Sit down!” the more they take it for applause, and the more excited and reminiscent and enthusiastic they get; and next, when they see the whole house laughing and crying, three of them think it is about the bitter old-time hardships they are describing, and the other three think the laughter is caused by the jokes they have been uncorking—­jokes of the vintage of 1836—­and then the way they do go on!  And finally when ushers come and plead, and beg, and gently and reverently crowd them down into their seats, they say, “Oh, I’m not tired—­I could bang along a week!” and they sit there looking simple and childlike, and gentle, and proud of their oratory, and wholly unconscious of what is going on at the other end of the room.  And so one of the great dignitaries gets a chance, and begins his carefully prepared speech, impressively and with solemnity—­

     “When we, now great and prosperous and powerful, bow our heads in
     reverent wonder in the contemplation of those sublimities of energy,
     of wisdom, of forethought, of——­”

Up come the immortal six again, in a body, with a joyous “Hey, I’ve thought of another one!” and at it they go, with might and main, hearing not a whisper of the pandemonium that salutes them, but taking all the visible violences for applause, as before, and hammering joyously away till the imploring ushers pray them into their seats again.  And a pity, too; for those lovely old boys did so enjoy living their heroic youth over, in these days of their honored antiquity; and certainly the things they had to tell were usually worth the telling and the hearing.

It was a stirring spectacle; stirring in more ways than one, for it was amazingly funny, and at the same time deeply pathetic; for they had seen so much, these time-worn veterans, end had suffered so much; and had built so strongly and well, and laid the foundations of their commonwealth so deep, in liberty and tolerance; and had lived to see the structure rise to such state and dignity and hear themselves so praised for honorable work.