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And while, upon the spot where John Quincy Adams fell, I pretended to listen to the guide, who was proving to me from a distance that the place was as good a whispering-gallery as any in Europe, I thought: "And why should not Frances Willard's statue be there? I am glad it is there.
It was another and singular advantage that a particular spot in one of the caverns, which bordered on the ravine, was the focus of an immense ear or whispering-gallery, such, that whatever took place in the public road in which the ravine terminated, could be distinctly heard there, and thus they were always kept on guard against the attack of an enemy, if expected.
If it happens to have been cut in stone, though it lie face down-most for ages on a forsaken beach, or "rest quietly under the drums and tramplings of many conquests," it may end by letting us into the secret of usurpations and other scandals gossiped about long empires ago: this world being apparently a huge whispering-gallery.
In other words, it is a whispering-gallery, and it so chanced that Senator Morrison sat at one of the definite points they call them vocal foci, I think and I at the other. That is the whole story." "You are quite sure there can be no mistake?" "Not the slightest doubt. The man with Morrison is a broker, and he has the Senator's order to sell ten thousand Panama common at the market to-morrow.
I don't think he chattered about his quandary, but people, knowing his situation, guessed what was going on in his mind, and he on his side guessed what they said. London discussions might as well go on in the whispering-gallery of St. Paul's. I could of course do only one thing, I could but reaffirm my conviction that the Roman attitude, as I may call it, was cruel, was falsely sentimental.
We took tickets for the vaults, the bell, the crypt, the whispering-gallery, the clock and all. We did not know what was before us.
"In some inexplicable absence of mind I left out the all-important 'not," said Indiman, ruefully, "and it has cost me one hundred thousand dollars. Mr. Harding, I beg your pardon. You are the unluckiest man alive," and he went on to tell him of the whispering-gallery and of the secret obtained in manner so extraordinary. "And then, through my stupidity, worse than wasted," he concluded.
Mark you, I don't altogether go back upon my faith I only add a new element to it. I've always said that we owe everything to thought. I've said that thoughts covered the seas with floating cities, and converted the world into a whispering-gallery. That thoughts have belted the globe with electric currents, and given us untold blessings. Now I know that I've stated only half a truth.
Would it have been all the same, had he lived in our type-setting modern world, with its multitudinous knowledges, its aroused conscience, its spurred and yet thwarted sympathies, its new incitements to egotism also, and new tools and appliances for egotism to use, placed, as it were, in the focus of a vast whispering-gallery, where all the sounds of heaven and earth came crowding, contending, incessant upon his ear?
He was the moneyed man of the place, and, although comparatively a new comer, was the autocrat of the settlement. His first visit to the town, "prospecting," caused considerable commotion; for if the groves and prairies had been arranged on the plan of a vast whispering-gallery, the fact that he had a golden purse could scarcely have circulated more rapidly.
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