"Ye've
plenty iv blarney; now out wid it."
But Jim was sober. He was awed by the magnitude of his enterprise. There
was the building in open outline. There was no going back. For better or
for worse, it held his destiny, and not only his, but that of one
other--perhaps of others still.
"A speech! a speech!" came from a dozen tongues.
"Boys," said Jim, "there's no more talk in me now nor there is in one o'
them chips. I don't seem to have no vent. I'm full, but it don't run. If
I could stick a gimblet in somewhere, as if I was a cider-barrel, I
could gi'en ye enough; but I ain't no barrel, an' a gimblet ain't no
use. There's a man here as can talk. That's his trade, an' if he'll say
what I ought to say, I shall be obleeged to 'im. Yates is a lawyer, an'
it's his business to talk for other folks, an' I hope he'll talk for
me."
"Yates! Yates!" arose on all sides.
Yates was at home in any performance of this kind, and, mounting a low
stump, said:
"Boys, Jim wants me to thank you for the great service you've rendered
him. You have come a long distance to do a neighborly deed, and that
deed has been generously completed. Here, in these forest shades, you
have reared a monument to human civilization.
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