perhaps, it be that itch of public speaking which it not infrequently

accompanies or begets. The two were conjoined in the case of Joseph; the

acute stage of this double malady, that in which the patient delivers

gratuitous lectures, soon declared itself with severity, and not many

years had passed over his head before he would have travelled thirty

miles to address an infant school. He was no student; his reading was

confined to elementary textbooks and the daily papers; he did not even

fly as high as cyclopedias; life, he would say, was his volume. His

lectures were not meant, he would declare, for college professors; they

were addressed direct to 'the great heart of the people', and the

heart of the people must certainly be sounder than its head, for his

lucubrations were received with favour. That entitled 'How to Live

Cheerfully on Forty Pounds a Year', created a sensation among the

unemployed. 'Education: Its Aims, Objects, Purposes, and Desirability',

gained him the respect of the shallow-minded. As for his celebrated

essay on 'Life Insurance Regarded in its Relation to the Masses', read

before the Working Men's Mutual Improvement Society, Isle of Dogs, it

was received with a 'literal ovation' by an unintelligent audience of

both sexes, and so marked was the effect that he was next year elected

honorary president of the institution, an office of less than

no emolument--since the holder was expected to come down with a

donation--but one which highly satisfied his self-esteem.

While Joseph was thus building himself up a reputation among the more

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