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My confidence sensibly declined; my sensitiveness amounted to nervousness; I had half a mind to run away and leave the show entirely to Hipp. But when I saw that child of the Mayflower stolidly, shrewdly going about his business, working the wires like an old operator, making the largest amount of thunder from so small a cloud, I was rebuked of my faintheartedness.

"Stop," cried Hipp, in his hard nasal tone, striding forward; "you have interrupted the lecturer after giving your parole; we recall our promise, as you have not stood by yours. Janitor, put out the lights!" The bald old gentleman quietly rose.

Now I dare say if we had brought a panorama of the war along, it would have been a stunning success; but standing upon high literary and forensic ground, of course they can't appreciate us. Confound 'em!" I think that Hipp has since had but two notions, the exhibition of that panorama, or, in the event of its failure, a declaration of war against the British people.

Hipp, who was a sort of American Crichton, managed the business details with consummate tact. I was announced as the eye-witness and participator of a hundred actions, fresh from the bloodiest fields and still smelling of saltpetre. My horse had been shot as I carried a General's orders under the fire of a score of batteries, and I was connected with journals whose reputations were world-wide.

The houses were invariably bad; we had the same fiery discussions every evening, but the same meagre receipts, and in every market town of northwestern Lancashire we buried a portion of our little capital, till once, after talking myself hoarse to a respectable audience of empty benches, Hipp and I looked blankly into each other's faces and silently put our last gold pieces upon the table.

This is done by the ingenious device of Hipp, shown in figure 90, where M is the electromagnet, P the iron bob, from which projects a wire bearing a light vane B of mica in the shape of a butterfly.

I strolled about the place for twenty-four hours on good terms with many townsmen, while Hipp, full of pluck and business, was posting me against all the dead walls of a farther village. Again and again I sketched the war-episodes I had followed, gaining fluency and confidence as by degrees my itinerant profession lost its novelty, but we as steadily lost money.

She recognized it as the voice of Julie Thompson, whom she had not seen at the dance up to that time, though she had been looking for her. "Oh, Mr. Hipp," Julie was saying. "Ah wants t' give you-all a knockdown to mah feller. Oh, here's Miss Gray, too. Folks, this is my feller, Lum Bangs." "Sounds like a pain in the back," muttered Hippy. "Lum, shake paws with Mister Hipp an' Miss Gray.

I replied, therefore, misgivingly, in the affirmative, and Hipp, the interrogator, exclaimed at once "Let us make a lecturing tour in England, and divide the expenses and the work; you will describe the war, and I will act as your agent." With true Yankee persistence Hipp developed his idea, and I consented to try the experiment, though with grave scruples.

We were three thousand miles from home, and the possessors of ten sovereigns apiece. I reached out my hand with a pale smile: "Old fellow," I said, "let us comfort ourselves by the assurance that we have deserved success. The time has come to say good by." "As you will," said Hipp: "it is all the fault of this pig-headed nation.