The Muse and I consequently spent the afternoon indoors in a quivering but substantial and well kept hotel, whose courteous landladies neither the Muse nor I will ever fail to remember with affectionate esteem. As I rode in an omnibus to the lecture hall that night, I rejoiced in the heaviness of the vehicle, which otherwise must have been overturned by the heavy blasts to which it was subjected.
When I reached the college I found the auditorium on the third floor of the main building in almost total darkness, the only light coming from an oil lamp standing on a piano at one end of the stage. The wind had put the electric lighting apparatus temporarily out of commission; but students were at work upon it, and I was assured that all would be well if I would defer my lecture for a little while. To this of course I consented; for, however pleasing it may be to talk to one person in the dark, there is no pleasure in addressing a multitude of people into whose eyes one is unable to look.
After fifteen minutes of waiting the electric lights suddenly gleamed forth, and I was gratified to see before me an audience of substantial size, made up for the most part of students, with a fair proportion of the townspeople scattered about here and there. The college was a coeducational institution, and the boys and girls were in fair measure paired off in congenial fashion.
With the restoration of the light the president of the college stepped to the front of the platform and presented me to the audience, after which I rose and approached the footlights to begin. But never a word was I permitted to speak; for as I started in the howling wind outside seemed to re-double in its fury and intensity. There came a sudden loud grinding and ripping sound, and a huge part of the roof was lifted bodily upward, and then dropped back with a crash. One heavy beam fell squarely in one of the aisles without injury to any one, though two feet off on either side it would have killed the occupants of the aisle seats, and from all parts of the great room big chunks of plaster and lathing fell in upon the audience.
There was present every element of a tragedy of fearful proportions; but from that assembled multitude of young people came not even a scream, and on every side I saw stalwart young Texans of To-day and To-morrow rise up from their seats, and _lean over the girls sitting crouched in the chairs beside them, taking all the weight and woe of that falling ceiling upon their own manly shoulders_! It was a magnificent exhibition of readiness of resource, self-control, and unselfish chivalry. Almost instantly with the first shock the president of the college, with a calmness at which I still marvel, rose from the chair behind me and confronted the gathering.