traveled. He felt that he had grown, but
that the town had stuck in the mire. He felt an ambition to lift it and
enlighten it. Like the old builder who found Rome brick and left it
marble, Shelby determined that the Wakefield which he found of plank he
should leave at least of limestone. Everything he saw displeased him and
urged him to reform it altogether, and he said:

"I'll change all this. And they'll love me for it."

And he did. But they--did they?

III

One day a greater than Shelby came to Wakefield, but not to stay. It was
no less than the President of these United States swinging around the
circle in an inspection of his realm, with possibly an eye to the
nearing moment when he should consent to re-election. As his special
train approached each new town the President studied up its statistics
so that he might make his speech enjoyable by telling the citizens the
things they already knew. He had learned that those are the things
people most like to hear.

His encyclopaedia informed him that Wakefield had a population of about
fifteen thousand. He could not know how venerable an estimate this was,
for Wakefield was still fifteen thousand--now and forever, fifteen
thousand and insuperable.

The President had a mental picture of just what such a town of fifteen
thousand would look like, and he wished himself back in the White House.

He was met at the train by the usual entertainment committee, which in
this case coincided with the executive committee of the Wide-a-Wakefield
Club. It had seemed just as well to these members to elect themselves as
anybody else.

Mr. Pettibone, the town's most important paper-hanger, was again
chairman after some lapses from office. Joel Spate, the Bon-Ton Grocer,
was once more secretary, after having been treasurer twice and president
once. The One-Price Emporium, however, was now represented by the
younger Forshay, son of the founder, who had gone to the inevitable
Greenwood at the early age of sixty-nine. Soyer, the swell tailor, had
yielded his place to the stateliest man in town, Amasa Harbury,
president of the Wakefield Building and Loan Association. And Eberhart,
of the Furniture Palace, had been supplanted by Gibson Shoals, the bank
cashier.

To the President's surprise the railroad station proved to be, instead
of the doleful shed usual in those parts, a graceful edifice of
metropolitan architecture. He was to ride in an open carriage, of
course, drawn by the