Or else it rained. It is sad to speak to thirty-two people in a hall large enough to hold a thousand and try to address those thirty-two people scattered about at the thirty-two points of the mariner’s compass. Once in New York I spoke to a fair audience in a hall on the ground floor. Things went on beautifully till 9 o’clock, when a big brass band struck up in the bigger hall over my head and some fifty couples commenced waltzing. It was an earthquake reversed. It ruined me for the night. None can realize until they enter the lecture field what trivial occurrences may transpire to upset the unfortunate on the platform and divert and distract the attention of an audience. On one occasion a cat got into a church where I was speaking, and trotted up and down a course she had laid out for herself before the pulpit. She did this with an erect tail, and at times made short remarks. It is singular that a single cat acting in this manner is more effective in interesting and amusing an “intelligent audience” than any speaker. Under such conditions Cicero himself would have to knock under to the cat. He might go on talking, but the cat would capture the house. And then the awful sensation of being obliged to keep on as though nothing had disturbed you; to pretend you don’t see such a cat; that you are not thinking of it; and knowing all the while that your audience are getting their money’s worth out of the cat and not out of you! On another fearful occasion I was speaking at Bridgehampton, Long Island, on the subject of temperance. I lectured on temperance occasionally, though I never professed teetotalism--for any length of time. One can lecture on temperance just as well without bring a total abstainer--and perhaps better. Now, I was born and they attempted to bring me up properly near Bridgehampton. Every one knew me and my ancestors, immediate and remote. I had not spoken over ten minutes when a man well-known in the neighborhood and much moved by the whiskey he had been drinking all day, arose and propounded some not very intelligible queries. I answered him as well as I could. Then he put more. Nay, he took possession of the meeting. No one ventured to silence him. They are a very quiet, orderly people in Bridgehampton. Such an interruption of a meeting had never before been heard of there, and the people seemed totally unable to cope with the emergency. The wretch delivered himself of a great variety of remarks, but ever and anon recurred to the assertion that “he’d vouch for my character, because he not only knew me, but my parents before me.” “He was present,” he said, “at their wedding, which he remembered well from the fact of wine being served there, as well as rum, gin, and brandy.” That for me was a laborious evening. Sometimes I spoke, and then the inebriate would get the floor and keep it. He rambled about the aisles, allayed a cutaneous disturbance in his back by rubbing himself