some remark of a neighbor at the table. his reader, however far he may take him

I.

As

YOLONEL CLIPSHAM led a curious life, but, for a man of his age, not an unpleasant one. His professional duties were not oppressive, and he had entered into a career which made it almost sure that they would never be oppressive. He had a very comfortable suite of rooms in his sister's house, and always breakfasted with her family. will be seen, they did not often expect him at dinner, but nieces and nephews, Sister Prue and her husband Wintergreen, were always glad if he did look in at that meal. For the rest, Clipsham was a general favorite in Tamworth, where he lived, and if there were not a german every evening, or a progressive euchre party on his list, why, there was the Thursday Club and the Whist Club and the Chess Club, and the Union and the Association, and the pretty new room of the Harvard Club. "6 As to that," said Clipsham truly, if you had asked him how he spent his evenings, " I am never so happy as I am with a novel But or with the newspaper at home." it was to be observed that he seldom enjoyed this acme of his happiness, at the top-notch of his life's tide.

The one thing of which Clipsham's friends were sure was this, that he would never go into public life. True, he always voted-he even voted for the school committee, which most of the people in Tamworth forgot to do. But it was also true that he did not attend primary meetings. And it was by a series of rather curious circumstances that the public was led to place that confidence in him which has now lifted him so far out of the run of machine-made politics. It is the business of this story to tell, for the first time so far as I know, the way those circumstances followed each other.

Dr. Hale starts from the standpoint of before the story ends. H. W. M.

bered the big things all along his life. He remembered that the national debt was $2,198,765,432.10 when it was at that precise amount, but he also remembered that he had told the washerwoman's boy to come round at a quarter past eight Friday evening and he would give him a ticket to the circus. On such a combination, of what I call the pig-iron memory and what I call the watch-spring memory, does much of the good cheer and success of a happy life depend.

But on a fatal day, after Clipsham was thirty-three years old, he thought he forgot something. I do not myself believe he did. If he did, it was before breakfast, when no one ought to be asked to remember anything-not whether Semiramis is the name of an empress or a toadstool. But he thought he forgot something. And so it was that he went down to Mr. Backup's shop and bought this calendar, of which I am going to tell you the story.

There it is. He gave it to me on the day of his inauguration. You see it has the days of the week on one scroll, and the days of the month on another. Then you turn this cog at the beginning of the month, and you are ready for thirty-one more days, if there be so many. The only defect in the machine is that you might suppose that there were thirty-one days in February. But, as Judge Marshall said, "the court is expected to know something."

Now, Clipsham is a charming public speaker. He tells a story well-in particular, he tells with great good humor a story to his own disadvantage. He remembers well--that has been said. He passes, by a sudden change-what, do singers call it, modulation?-from grave to gay, or from gay to grave. Best of all, he never says one word about himself. Then he never pretends that he does not like to speak. He does like to speak. A man would be an ass who did not like to speak, if he spoke as well as Clipsham does. He makes no introductions to his speech. When he has done, he makes no "conclusion." Just when you are hoping he will say more he

sits down. And he never makes a long speech. These are all sterling qualities, and they are not often united in one handsome, graceful, intelligent young man of thirty-three.

So it is that Clipsham is much invited to public dinners. As for that, we all are. But generally the invitation is accompanied with a request that in accepting you will pay for your ticketa dollar and a half, or three dollars, or five, or ten-according as the honored guest of the evening is a college professor, doctor of divinity, an agent from Japan, or a traveling English lecturer. Now, as most of us can bolt our modest dinner of mock turtle, fried oysters, charlotte russe, and coffee at any eatinghouse, even the most fussy, noisy, and showy, for less than the lowest of these prices, our invitations are not so attractive. To Clipsham the invitation always came with a ticket. That is quite a different thing, and Clipsham, who was in a good many college societies, was the greatgrandson of a Cincinnatus and a grandson of a hero of Lundy's Lane, and son of the man who stormed Chapultepec and held the block-house at Gannon's Three Corners-Clipsham, I say, who was a member of the United Guild of Men of Letters, and of the Consolidated Sodality of Lovers of Art-Clipsham, whose good humor and good fellowship had related him to pretty much all the associations in Tamworth, and indeed in that whole State, found that he was bidden to a public dinner almost every day. Indeed, sometimes the "bids," as his childish nephews called them, overlapped each other.

This was the reason why he dined so seldom with his sister. On the other hand, it was the reason why you met him so seldom at a restaurant or public table.

You would generally find him if you went upstairs to the great dining-room of whichever Delmonico or Wormley or Parker or Young of Tamworth happened on that day to entertain the "Soul of the Soldiery," or the "Brothers in Adversity," or the "Nu Kappa Omega," or whatever sodality happened to be holding its annual dinner. And if you looked in at the right moment, Clipsham would

be making a speech, and a very good speech, too.

II.

Clipsham's little niece, Gertrude, is the first heroine of this story. And it is on her that the plot turns, more than on Elinor May, who is the other heroine. Gertrude has the run of the house, but never ought to go to her uncle's room unless he asks her. And this Gertrude knows perfectly well.

But on this day of which I speak, some impulse of Satan, as the old indictments would tell you, and Dr. Watts would confirm them, led Gertrude into the "study," as the room was called. The same Manichean divinity, whose name begins with S, but shall not be mentioned again, moved her to take down the calendar mentioned before, and to try the screws. She twirled them this way, she twirled them that. Of a sudden she heard Kate Connor, the girl who made the beds.

Gertrude feared detection. She hung up the calendar hastily and fled. But, alas! she left M, which stands for Monday, and 10, which stands for the tenth day of the month, both one notch too high. T., W., Th., F., and the rest all followed M., and the engagements for the month were all set one day wrong.

Kate Connor did not in fact enter the room. But guilty Gertrude thought she would, and the result was the same. Gertrude was called by her mother, before she had any chance to go back again, and was made ready for a tennis party at Mrs. Fisher's. And now it is that, strictly speaking, this story begins.

George Clipsham came home to dress for dinner. He stopped a moment, and took down the cyclopædia to look at the account of the Battle of Bennington. For he had been turning over a speech which he was to make at a Grand Army gathering, and he remembered that Plunkett's mother was a Stark. He wanted to make a good allusion to Molly Stark and her widowhood. But as he passed his desk he took the fatal calendar, which guilty Gertrude had not had time to hang on its peg. Clipsham hung it up without a thought, but did look to see, to his amazement, that the Grand

Army dinner was done and gone yesterday. The calendar said he was to dine with the graduates of the Western Re"Lucky I did not serve College to-day. fire the battle of Bennington at them,' said Clipsham to himself, "but what will Plunkett say?"

The truth was that Clipsham had this dreadful cold which you all had. And just as you and I determined that we would go to Florida another winter if our lives were spared, Clipsham had determined. Handkerchiefs?-he was bankrupt in buying them. Hearing?-he had been stone-deaf all the week. He did not cough very badly, but the cold was just on the juncture of the pharynx with the larynx, where it is uncomfortable to have it. He had stayed at home the day before and nursed it-glycerine and whisky, taken with a very small spoon, was his remedy-and he had persuaded himself that he could go out to-day.

To tell the whole truth, his sister Prue had had pea-soup and salt codfish for dinner yesterday, and the children had been very noisy. Clipsham had determined to change the scene. So he had determined to dine with the Grand Army to-day, and now the calendar said the Grand Army dinner was "done and gone.' 'Well," said Clipsham to himself, "I could not have spoken aloud anyway. And I should not have heard a word they said. Western Reserve it is to-day. Lucky I looked." And he went on with his dressing, and thought over some old Harvard stories which would do to tell to the Western Reserve graduates.

As he went out, furred and even veiled, and with those horrid arctics on which made him limp with pain, Prue met him at the door.

"Dear George, you are not going out with that dreadful cough? Why, I was sure of you. I have asked Mrs. Oliphant and the Pryces to meet you, and I have such a lovely pair of canvasbacks."

George intimated that he didn't hear. Prue shouted her bill of fare, physical and metaphysical, into his ear.

George was sorry. But he was all ready, and to the hotel dinner he went, and left those canvas-backs behind.

Prue's would be warm, alas! and at the Hotel Jefferson-that was more doubtful.

III.

The waiters all know George to a man, and he was shown to the reception parlor instantly. The reader understands what George did not-why a third of the guests were in uniform. Of course they were, for it was the Grand Army of the Republic. But George, who thought it was the Western Reserve dinner, was surprised that the college men wanted to bring out their old blue frocks and bright buttons. "But that was all right," he said, "if they chose to." Oddly enough, his friend, Colonel Plunkett, was receiving the guests, and Clipsham slipped into his hand the note of apology he had written. Plunkett slipped it into the little pocket of his uniform coat, and found it there two years afterwards, when he dressed for the same anniversary again. Clipsham mumbled an apology to Plunkett, which, almost of course, Plunkett, in shaking hands with half the soldiers in the State, did not hear.

Clipsham is a bright man, and one would have said that he would have caught the thread of the occasion earlier than he did. But he did not hear one word in five that any one said. As for the uniforms, all the world knows that five-sixths of the college men of the West served in the war. Besides, they had introduced Clipsham to Professor Schmidgruber, who had just arrived, as the agent from the Government of HesseCassel to study Western education. Clipsham was interested in the savant, and they talked very earnestly, the savant speaking directly into Clipsham's ear.

So it was that, when Clipsham got a card at the dinner-table from Plunkett, who was presiding, which said, "You next," he knew that now was his turn to speak, without having known much of what had been said before him.

And a very good speech it was. Not one word about the war, nor the bird of freedom, nor the American soldier, nor Molly Stark, as there would have been had Clipsham understood the truth, that he was speaking to a Grand Army post. Instead of this he spoke, with serious feeling, on the work which edu

cated men can render in any community. What he had been saying to the German he now said aloud. There is the secret

He

of a good speech. He spoke to the men before him as if they were all scholars, all men of conscience, and all leaders in the villages or towns where they lived. told some good stories, he made some good jokes, but his speech was not in the least commonplace, and it ended with a very serious pledge as to the duty they would all do to their country.

It was received rapturously-yes, wildly. Indeed, as the reader will understand, it was better received than it would have been by the graduates whom Clipham thought he was addressing. Every one of these good fellows was pleased that one of the most accomplished men of letters in Tamworth spoke to him as an equal with equals. They had only too much of soldier-talk, and were glad to hear something sung or said. to another tune. Clipsham had gone deeper down than the average and commonplace, as he was apt to do.

Now you would say that, before he left the hotel, he would have found out his mistake, or that, at all events, he would have understood it from the newspapers next morning. But there you are quite wrong. In the first place, he only stayed "to listen to two more speeches," as he said. For it did not seem courteous to go away the moment he had himself spoken. In fact, he did not hear one word of either of them. As for the newspapers, Clipsham generally looked at thein, though not always. He never looked, however, at what the reporters called their "sketches" of his speeches. "Why should I make myself miserable?" said Clipsham. Nobody else reads the things, and why should I?" If he had stayed long at his office next morning, or looked in at the club, he might have found that his calendar was all wrong. But instead of this he took Dr. Schmidgruber to examine the high school, so he remained quite sure that he had spoken to the college men the night before, and that to-night he was to speak to the carriage-builders. In fact, as the reader knows, he would meet the college men, and the carriage-builders' night would not come till to-morrow.

66

And it all happened just as before, as it says in the Arabian Nights and in Grimm's fairy tales. Only this time Clipsham sat at the cross table, because he was to respond for Harvard and was among the more distinguished guests. But little did the poor fellow know what he was to respond for. He did know that the Carriage-Builders' Association of the country brings together a remarkable body of men. He had dined with them a year or two before. Their business requires an interest in design, a knowledge of the physical structure of the world, an acquaintance with all sorts and conditions of men, all combined with remarkable tact and promptness. Observe that carriage-builders, like railroad men, are always trying to annihilate time, or to give us more of it, which is the same thing.

"Ye shall become as gods,-transcendent fate!"

So Clipsham knew he was to speak to a bright set. In point of fact, he did speak to the triennial gathering of the graduates of the Western Reserve College, one of the oldest and largest of the Western universities. And he told them things which it was very good for them to hear, but which people did not very often tell them at these meetings. He told them that man is man, because he can control matter by spirit-that this shows that he is a child of God. He told them that the child of God works with God, and that here is the difference between work and labor; that work elevates man, while labor fatigues man. He charged them. to see that the men whom they employed should not be mere laborers, but should become fellow-workmen with God. He said they might rest from their labors, but that their works must always follow them. And he said very seriously that this was no matter of book-learning, that they would not find it in Seneca and Aristotle, but that they would find it in proportion as they were men of honor and truth, as they forgot themselves and consecrated their workshops into temples.

Then he sat down, and, just as it was the night before, the speech was received with cheers. The truth is that, at any