Then ensued another interim of golden "Silence and slow Time," as Poet KEATS says, which was as if to become Sempiternity, had not I, rushing in where the angels were in fear of slipping up, caught the Speaker in the eye, and tipped the wink of my _cacoëthes loquendi_.
To prevent disappointment, I shall report my harangue with verbose accuracy.
_Myself_ (_assuming a perpendicular attitude, inserting one hand among my vest buttons, and waving the other with a graceful affability_). "HON'BLE MISS CHAIRWOMAN, MADAMS, MISSES, AND HON'BLE MISTER OPENER, the humble individual now palpitating on his limbs before you is a denizen from a land whose benighted, ignorant inhabitants are accustomed to treat the females of their species as small fry and fiddle faddle. Yes, Madams and Misses, in India the woman is forbidden to eat except in the severest solitude, and after her lord and master has surfeited his pangs of hunger; she may not make the briefest outdoor excursion without permission, and then solely in a covered _palkee_, or the hermetically sealed interior of a blinded carriage. (_Cries of 'Shame.'_) In the Zenana, she is restricted to the occupation of puerile gossipings, or listening to apocryphal fairy tales of so scandalising an impropriety that I shrink to pollute my ears by the repetition even of the tit-bits. (_Subdued groans._)
"Such being the case, you can imagine the astonishment and gratification I have experienced here this evening at the intelligence and forwardness manifested by so many effeminate intellects. (_A flattered rustle and prolonged simpering._)
"The late respectable Dr BEN JOHNSON, gifted author of _Boswell's Biography_ (_applause_), once rather humorously remarked, on witnessing a nautch performed by canine quadrupeds, that--although their choreographical abilities were of but a mediocre nature--the wonderment was that they should be capable at all to execute such a hind-legged feat and _tour de force_.
"Similarly, it is to me a gaping marvel that womanish tongues should hold forth upon subjects which are naturally far outside the radius of their comprehensions.
"The subject for our discursiveness to-night is, '_To what extent has Ibsen contributed to the Cause (if any) of Female Emancipation?_' and being a total ignoramus up to date of the sheer existence of said hon'ble gentleman, I shall abstain from scratching my head over so Sphinxian a conundrum, and confine myself to knuckling to the obiter diction of sundry lady speakers.