As he walked upon the stagin’ behind the Editer of the Gimlet, the band struck up, “Hail to the chief, that in trihump advances.” As soon as it stopped playin’ the Editer of the Gimlet come forward and said--
“Fellow citizens of Jonesville and the adjacent and surroundin’ world, I have the honor and privilege of presenting to you the orator of the day, the noble and eloquent Prof. Aspire Todd Esq.”
Prof. Todd came forward and made a low bow.
“Bretheren and sisters of Jonesville,” says he; “Friends and patrons of Liberty, in risin’ upon this aeroter, I have signified by that act, a desire and a willingness to address you. I am not here fellow and sister citizens, to outrage your feelings by triflin’ remarks, I am not here male patrons of liberty to lead your noble, and you female patrons your tender footsteps into the flowery fields of useless rhetorical eloquence; I am here noble brothers and sisters of Jonesville not in a mephitical manner, and I trust not in a mentorial, but to present a few plain truths in a plain manner, for your consideration. My friends we are in one sense but tennifolious blossoms of life; or, if you will pardon the tergiversation, we are all but mineratin’ tennirosters, hovering upon an illinition of mythoplasm.”
“Jess so,” cried old Bobbet, who was settin’ on a bench right under the speaker’s stand, with his fat red face lookin’ up shinin’ with pride and enthusiasm, (and the brandy he had took to honor the old Revolutionary heroes) “Jess so! so we be!”
Prof. Todd looked down on him in a troubled kind of a way for a minute, and then went on--
“Noble inhabitants of Jonesville and the rural districts, we are actinolitic bein’s, each of our souls, like the acalphia, radiates a circle of prismatic tentacles, showing the divine irridescent essence of which composed are they.”
“Jes’ so,” shouted old Bobbet louder than before. “Jes’ so, so they did, I’ve always said so.”
“And if we are content to moulder out our existence, like fibrous, veticulated, polypus, clingin’ to the crustaceous courts of custom, if we cling not like soarin’ prytanes to the phantoms that lower thier sceptres down through the murky waves of retrogression, endeavorin’ to lure us upward in the scale of progressive bein’--in what degree do we differ from the accolphia?”