With the mastery of my “h’s” and the daily discipline in the oratorical class came an overmastering desire to make a public speech. I thought that if I could accomplish that I should vindicate myself so far as I had gone in my education. It should be the first milestone in my school career. The opportunity was given in a proposed oratorical contest to be held in the village church. I took Thropper into my confidence as I prepared my original oration. Into this I tried to exemplify every admirable rule of rhetoric and every stern rule of logic and every manner of long, short, periodic, balanced, and climactic sentence I was then learning in Rhetoric. I marshalled historical allusions, read widely in the library hour after hour. Then, when I had put myself through this profitable discipline and had typewritten my manuscript--the final triumph of my educational career thus far--I was ready for rehearsals. After I had practised alone and as the evening of the contest drew near, I asked Thropper if each evening after supper he would accompany me into the woods and listen while I delivered my oration. He consented, cheerfully enough. That same evening he accompanied me to the pastures in the rear of the University. I poised myself seriously on a stump, while Thropper stood with his back to the wind in a waiting attitude. I had not delivered more than two paragraphs of my speech before there came a yell from behind me and a half-dozen students ran shouting, applauding and screaming before me. When the crowd of interrupters had exhausted their animal spirits, I said to them, addressing them from the stump, “I’ve a good mind to invite you to stand out there near Thropper and listen!” “Why not?” they demanded. “If you can’t address a bunch of farmers like these,” smiled Thropper, “you won’t be able to stand up in church before three hundred people and give it. Go ahead!” I did, and the result was that the students rallied about me at the end, carried me on their shoulders, shouting, mockingly, “Hail to the new Webster!” and to show their approval of me, they sat me astride a rail and would have given me a ride home on that conveyance had not Thropper prevented it.