Hail! friends and fellow-citizens--!" It was evident that I had borrowed somebody else's voice--my own mother wouldn't have recognized it--and a mighty poor show of a voice, too.

It was like a race-horse that suddenly balks, and loses the race.
I had put up heavy stakes on that voice, but I couldn't budge it.

Not an inch faster would it go.

In vain I whipped and spurred in silent desperation--it balked at "fellow-citizens," and there it stuck.

The audience, good-naturedly, waited five minutes.