The next speaker was the illustrious Professor Gnowital, who declared that Ourtown would never experience any genuine intellectual development unless a thorough study of the fantastic romances of Hoffmann was begun at once. I cannot imagine what started the professor off on that tack unless it was a desire to choose a subject of which his hearers knew absolutely nothing. His words had a great effect, however, for very few members of the club had ever heard of Hoffmann, and it had never occurred to these that his ghostly tales were at all in the line of that modern culture which they all adored.
The next speaker was Mrs. Measel, whose career I have watched with feelings of mingled respect and amazement. Mrs. Measel has taught art in a dozen towns, lectured on the Great Unknowable in at least two of the large cities, and given “Mornings with Montaigne,” “Babblings from Browning,” and “Studies from Stepniak,” in whatever place she could obtain a hearing. On this occasion she talked about the renaissance of something or other, I’ve forgotten exactly what--and, by the way, there is no better word for use in culture circles than renaissance, and that, too, whether you can pronounce it or not--well, she began with her renaissance, but very soon branched off into a dissertation on Tolstoï and Ibsen and a few more “epoch-making” people with whose names she happened to be familiar. I remember she said that _The Doll’s House_ was one of the grandest plays of modern times, whereat Dr. Paulejeune, who had listened to everything up to this point without turning a hair, smiled broadly. On the whole Mrs. Measel’s was a good shallow talk for good shallow people, and I am sure she made a delightful impression on us all.
Then, at a signal from the president, Dr. Paulejeune made his way to the platform and delivered an address which I am sure will never be forgotten by those who heard it. It was a daring speech for any one to make, and particularly so for a stranger, and that it proved effective in a far higher degree than either of us had ever expected was due to the tact, scholarship, subtlety, and sincerity of my distinguished friend, Dr. Émile Paulejeune.
The doctor began with a graceful tribute to the eloquence, wit, and scholarship of the speakers who had preceded him, and then went on to say that he had chosen as the subject of his discourse one of the greatest writers of fiction that the world has ever known--Daniel De Foe.