15 May 1865 – 21 May 1865

Dublin. Car with S. F. to Stephen's Green — ' Chemical Preparation Room ' (jokes about that). Introduced to chairman. Dr. E. Kennedy, and committee, then march through door and find myself in lecture-room, as depicted by S. F. Look over audience and see people I know, but take no special note of any. After the chairman's introduction, I read my lecture on Poetry for an hour, but often departing from the written text into more colloquial forms. I made no stumbles and felt no sensations of fear, depression, elation, or any other sort. This I find satisfactory to remember, and put along with some other personal experiences as indicating character — such as, the falling of a firework into a straw-yard and my immediately climbing the wall and putting it out ; the defending myself against two dogs, one a bloodhound, in a solitary warren ; the recovery from a sudden qualm on the scaffolding of a tower. The quality of coolness, presence of mind, when face to face with occasion, can only be discovered by trial, and it is agreeable to know or believe that one possesses it. As long as a question is open for decision I can be as vacillating as any one alive.