er manufactures to fill an encyclopedia.
He dilated upon the beauty and grandeur of Canadian scenery. He stood
his audience upon the heights of Quebec and showed them the whole
panorama of their wonderful country in one sentence. He swept from
ocean to ocean; he swam the great lakes and sailed down innumerable
rivers; he scooped out a canal to Port Nelson and shot across Hudson's
Bay; he rolled across the prairies; he hewed down the forest belt; he
dug gold in British Columbia; and, finally, he climbed the highest
snow-capped peak of the Rocky Mountains and poured down from its dizzy
heights the torrents of his eloquence; and when his bewildered hearers
recovered from the delightful deluge, they found that the exponent of
the Canadian Patriotic Society had skipped across the Atlantic and was
thundering forth upon the wonders and beauty of Ireland!

This was a long way from Canada and the aims of the Canadian Patriotic
Society, and the chairman's face lost its rapt look. John Egerton hid
a smile behind the pulpit desk and that part of the audience that was
of Irish extraction applauded uproariously. When, after nearly half an
hour's lauding of the Emerald Isle, the orator did stop, he was so
carried away by his own feelings that he wound up with a stanza,
recited most thrillingly, from "Erin-go-Bragh" and sat down amid
deafening applause without referring in the remotest way to his
original text.

Mr. Watson was rising to announce the next piece, in a rather doubtful
mood, when a voice from the back called out, with no uncertain sound as
to either the sentiments or the origin of its owner, "Wot's the matter
with England?"

There was a roar of laughter and a loud clapping of hands. Mr. Hayes
arose again. He was too old a politician not to see that he had made a
mistake in his one-sided speech. He was about to supplement it, and
was beginning "Ladies and Gentlemen," when a loud voice from the centre
of the church interrupted him.

Mr. Sim Basketful had sat with an expression of utter boredom during
the latter portion of the member's speech, finally working himself up
into a volcanic mood as it neared an end. His face was purple and his
short, thick neck showed veins standing out dangerously. He might have
held down his righteous indignation had it not been for the challenge
from the back of the room, but the sight of that "blathering Irishman"
rising in response to it was too much. Mr. Basketful was not of Mr