I can't hear a lyceum or debating society mentioned to this day, without feeling "cold-chills" run down my spine.
I took part in the exercises the evening ours was opened.

I had been requested by the committee to furnish the poem for the occasion.

As I was just from a first-class academy, where I had read the valedictory, it was taken for granted that I was the most likely one to "fill the bill." I accepted the proposition.

To be bashful is a far different thing from being modest.

I wrote the poem.