Somehow the doctor seemed to be all keyed up, instead of scared, like a feller that's had jest enough to drink to give him a fighting edge.
"Mr.Chairman," says Billy Harden, flushing up and stuttering jest a little, "I b-beg leave to d-d-decline." "What," says the doctor, sort of playing with Billy with his eyes and grin, and turning like to let the whole crowd in on the joke, "DECLINE?
The eminent gentleman declines! And he is going to sit down, too, with all that speech bottled up in him! O Demosthenes!" he says, "you have lost your pebble in front of all Greece." Several grinned at Billy Harden as he set down, and three or four laughed outright.

I guess about half of them there knowed him fur a wind bag, and some wasn't sorry to see him joshed.

But I seen what the doctor was trying to do.

He knowed he was in an awful tight place, and he was feeling that crowd's pulse, so to speak.

He had been talking to crowds fur twenty years, and he knowed the kind of sudden turns they will take, and how to take advantage of 'em.