Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/272

 MARK TWAIN

dinary men come to being born together. Two such births have seldom signalized a single year in human history.

But perhaps the final and closing demonstration was peculiarly grateful to them. This was a Com- students. It was held in a huge hall, very long and very lofty, which had five galleries, far above every body s head, which were crowded with ladies four or five hundred, I judged.

It was beautifully decorated with clustered flags and various ornamental devices, and was brilliantly lighted. On the spacious floor of this place were ranged, in files, innumerable tables, seating twenty- four persons each, extending from one end of the great hall clear to the other, and with narrow aisles between the files. In the center on one side was a high and tastefully decorated platform twenty or thirty feet long, with a long table on it behind which sat the half-dozen chiefs of the givers of the Com- mers in the rich medieval costumes of as many different college corps. Behind these youths a band of musicians was concealed. On the floor directly in front of this platform were half a dozen tables which were distinguished from the outlying conti nent of tables by being covered instead of left naked. Of these the central table was reserved for the two heroes of the occasion and twenty particularly emi nent professors of the Berlin University, and the other covered tables were for the occupancy of a hundred less distinguished professors.

I was glad to be honored with a place at the table

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