..."
"Excuse me, sir; we can't hear a word down here."
'Ah!' thought the secretary, 'I was expecting that.'
The chairman went on, undisturbed. But several shareholders now rose,
and the same speaker said testily: "We might as well go home. If the
chairman's got no voice, can't somebody read for him?"
The chairman took a sip of water, and resumed. Almost all in the last
six rows were now on their feet, and amid a hubbub of murmurs the
chairman held out to the secretary the slips of his speech, and fell
heavily back into his chair.
The secretary re-read from the beginning; and as each sentence fell from
his tongue, he thought: 'How good that is!' 'That's very clear!' 'A neat
touch!' 'This is getting them.' It seemed to him a pity they could not
know it was all his composition. When at last he came to the Pillin sale
he paused for a second.
"I come now to the measure of policy to which I made allusion at the
beginning of my speech. Your Board has decided to expand your enterprise
by purchasing the entire fleet of Pillin & Co., Ltd. By this transaction
we become the owners of the four steamships Smyrna, Damascus, Tyre, and
Sidon, vessels in prime condition with a total freight-carrying capacity
of fifteen thousand tons, at the low inclusive price of sixty thousand
pounds.
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