Explore "On the Platform" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When Dr. Bill Bartlett stepped out of the hum / Of Mammon's distracting and wearisome strife / To stand and deliver a lecture on "Some / Conditions of Intellectual Life," / I cursed the offender who gave him the hall / To lecture on any conditions at all!
But he rose with a fire divine in his eye, / Haranguing with endless abundance of breath, / Till I slept; and I dreamed of a gibbet reared high, / And Dr. Bill Bartlett was dressing for death.
And I thought in my dream: "These conditions, no doubt, / Are bad for the life he was talking about."
So I cried (pray remember this all was a dream): / "Get off of the platform! -- it isn't the kind!" / But he fell through the trap, with a jerk at the beam, / And wiggled his toes to unburden his mind.
And, O, so bewitching the thoughts he advanced, / That I clung to his ankles, attentive, entranced!