Somehow I went on lecturing. As I remember it now, the lecture seemed orthodox enough, in spite of the strange events that it inspired. I felt that I was acquitting myself moderately well, though I remember that I mopped my brow repeatedly, and longed for the end of the period as I had never longed for time to pass before. What would my visitors think of me, or of this precious class of mine? I alone had seen that mute sign for silence, to be sure, but no one could fail to notice the other preposterous things that were coming to pass. For now three men toward the rear of the class began, seemingly by agreement between them, to shake their heads at me in a solemn and unequivocal signal that I would do better to leave off my lecture. This, I thought, would be the worst; but no, in a moment one man actually stepped up to my desk, and when I paused, whispered a very apologetic request that I would not trouble the class further by lecturing on this particular day. He had listened with great interest to my former lectures, he was pleased to say, but he felt that he was speaking for the whole class in intimating that to-day I could not but disturb them, and in fact endanger them, if I continued. I told him that he could save himself from further danger by quitting the room; and this he did forthwith, his reluctance exceeded only by his apparent amazement. The others seemed to understand what had passed between us, though I was sure that they could not have overheard a word we said. Four or five of them, indeed, rose and followed their departing brother from their room, with faces as full of bewilderment as his. But I was past wondering at anything by this time. Endeavoring to seem indifferent to their departure, I ploughed on, with a pertinacity far beyond anything I possess in a waking state, through the middle of my lecture. I had come to Rousseau and his battle with the apostles of the Enlightenment. And about this point the craziest of all the occurrences of this remarkable hour began. A man on the front row picked up a card-board box from the floor near his feet. Opening it, he produced a roll of absorbent cotton. With bits of this he deliberately set about stopping up his ears as tightly as he could. When he had stuffed them full he resumed work with his pen, but passed the cotton, with a wink, on to his neighbor, who repeated the performance. A third student filled his organs of audition and handed the box on to a fourth. I watched that blessed roll of cotton make its round of the students. One and all of them, men and women, stuffed their ears with it!