clapping. That disconcerted me still more; for there was my audience applauding some artistic noise which I felt in my very bones they did not understand. I had to make peace with myself before I could begin with my exposition of the Thoreau letters; so I just told them right out what I had been thinking of whilst they were listening to that incomprehensible singing. I told them I had been thinking of the rude homeliness of that shanty at Walden Pond, and that my peculiar environment just then nearly paralyzed me, and only that I had the courage of my convictions, I could not read the Thoreau letters then and there. Just then a distinguished-looking gentleman, with the greatest expanse of shirt-front I had ever seen during all my earthly career, adjusted an English monocle
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