Certain places are very business-like in their arrangements, and the smartest in this respect is, curious to say, not in America, but in England. You are brought to the place of operation five minutes before the hour, and at two minutes to eight placed upon the platform. When the hand of the clock points to eight you begin to speak, and when the hand stands at nine you close. If you are one minute late in beginning, the audience grows restless, and if you are five minutes late in closing, they leave. There are no preliminaries and no after-talk, and you do your best with one of the most intelligent audiences any lecturer could address in sixty minutes. The most risky audience in my experience is afforded by the free lectures given in an English city, which is made up by men who have dropped in from the streets because the hall is open and because something is going on. If they are interested they will listen eagerly and reward the lecturer with enthusiastic applause, besides giving an irrelevant cheer occasionally for Old Ireland or Lord Roberts. If the audience is not interested they leave in solid blocks of fifty, without any regard to the lecturer's feelings, or the disturbance of their neighbours. The most sympathetic and encouraging audience a man can have are the students of an American ladies' college, because if he is nervous, as an Englishman is bound to be before three hundred bright American young women, they will catch his first point, and they will smile upon him and show that they believe there is something in him if he could only get it out, and create such a kindly atmosphere that he will rise to his height and do his best. This was how the students of a delightful college not very far from Philadelphia treated myself when I was almost ready to sink through the floor from sheer terror of facing so many young women, being a sisterless and daughterless man, and I wish to thank one young lady who sat in the front and smiled encouragement upon me until I lifted up my head and took heart. I have never utterly collapsed, and have never fled from the platform, but I was reduced to confusion and incoherence of speech when I opened a clubhouse for a company of women students at a certain American University, and my whole audience suddenly flopped down upon the floor as I began my little speech. As the floor had a beautiful carpet and there were no chairs, the young ladies no doubt did well for themselves, but as I looked down upon that fair flower-garden all my thoughts vanished, and I do not think that I uttered a grammatical sentence. American young women do not know that an Englishman is the most bashful creature on the face of the earth, and that he would rather face an audience of two thousand men from the streets than address twenty young women, every one as sharp as a needle and as pretty as a flower.