He was so set up
that he concluded to make a speech - of course a
humorous speech. I think I never heard so many old
played-out
jokes strung together in my life. He was
worse than the minstrels, worse than the clown in the
circus. It seemed peculiarly sad to sit here, thirteen
hundred
years before I was born, and listen again to
poor, flat, worm-eaten jokes that had given me the dry
gripes when I was a boy thirteen hundred years afterwards.