The bands played,and all the people turned out to receive us.I marched up that Common so proud at the head of my troops,and we turned down into the town hall.Then they seated my soldiers down the center aisle and I sat down on the front seat.A great assembly ofpeople a hundred or two-—came in to fill the town hall,so that they stood up all around.Then the town officers came in and formed a half-circle.The mayor of the town sat in the middle of the platform.He was a man who had never held office before;but he was a good man,and his friends have told me that I might use this without giving them offense.He was a good man,but he thought an office made a man great.He came up and took his seat,adjusted his powerful spectacles,and looked around,when he suddenly spied me sitting there on the front seat.He came right forward on the platform and invited me up to sit with the town officers.No town officer ever took any notice of me before I went to war,except to advise the teacher to thrash me,and now I was invited up on the stand with the town officers.Oh my!the town mayor was then the emperor,the king of our day and our time.As I came up on the platform they gave me a chair about this far,I would say,from the front.
When I had got seated,the chairman of the Selectmen arose and came forward to the table,and we all supposed he would introduce the Congregational minister,who was the only orator in town,and that he would give the oration to the returning soldiers.But,friends,you should have seen the surprise which ran over the audience when they discovered that the old fellow was going to deliver that speech himself.Hehad never made a speech in his life,but he fell into the same error that hundreds of other men have fallen into.It seems so strange that a man won't learn must speak his piece as a boy if he in tends to be an orator when he is grown,but he seems to think all he has to do is to hold an office to be a great orator.