“It will be unnecessary to do what Delilah proposes,” said Mrs. Noah, with a kindly smile, as she rose up from the corner in which she had been sitting, an interested listener. “I can introduce the gentleman to you all with perfect propriety. He’s a member of my family. His grandfather was the great-grandson a thousand and eight times removed of my son Shem’s great-grandnephew on his father’s side. His relationship to me is therefore obvious, though from what I know of his reputation I think he takes more after my husband’s ancestors than my own. Willie, dear, these ladies are friends of mine. Ladies, this young man is one of my most famous descendants. He has been a man of many adventures, and he has been hanged once, which, far from making him undesirable as an acquaintance, has served merely to render him harmless, and therefore a safe person to know. Now, my son, go ahead and speak your piece.” The good old spirit sat down, and the scruples of the objectors having thus been satisfied, Captain Kidd began. “Now that I know you all,” he remarked, as pleasantly as he could under the circumstances, “I feel that I can speak more freely, and certainly with a great deal less embarrassment than if I were addressing a gathering of entire strangers. I am not much of a hand at speaking, and have always felt somewhat nonplussed at finding myself in a position of this nature. In my whole career I never experienced but one irresistible impulse to make a public address of any length, and that was upon that unhappy occasion to which the greatest and grandest of my great-grandmothers has alluded, and that only as the chain by which I was suspended in mid-air tightened about my vocal chords. At that moment I could have talked impromptu for a year, so fast and numerously did thoughts of the uttermost import surge upward into my brain; but circumstances over which I had no control prevented the utterance of those thoughts, and that speech is therefore lost to the world.” “He has the gift of continuity,” observed Madame Récamier. “Ought to be in the United States Senate,” smiled Elizabeth. “I wish I could make up my mind as to whether he is outrageously handsome or desperately ugly,” remarked Helen of Troy. “He fascinates me, but whether it is the fascination of liking or of horror I can’t tell, and it’s quite important.”