ecause the committee begged us to do so. I have only one thing
more to say. If you care to listen to me courteously I am willing to
waste time on you; but don't imagine that I will stand here and wait
while you criticize the management."

By this time I felt as if I had a child across my knee to whom I was
administering maternal chastisement, and the uneasiness of my audience
underlined the impression. They listened rather sulkily at first; then
a few of the best-natured among them laughed, and the laugh grew and
developed into applause. The experience had done them good, and they
were a chastened band when Clara Morris appeared, and I gladly yielded
the floor to her.

All the actresses who spoke that night delivered admirable addresses,
but no one equaled Madame Modjeska, who delivered exquisitely a speech
written, not by herself, but by a friend and countrywoman, on the
condition of Polish women under the regime of Russia. We were all
charmed as we listened, but none of us dreamed what that address would
mean to Modjeska. It resulted in her banishment from Poland, her native
land, which she was never again permitted to enter. But though she paid
so heavy a price for the revelation, I do not think she ever really
regretted having given to America the facts in that speech.

During this same period I embarked upon a high adventure. I had always
longed for a home, and my heart had always been loyal to Cape Cod. Now I
decided to have a home at Wianno, across the Cape from my old parish at
East Dennis. Deep-seated as my home-making aspiration had been, it was
realized largely as the result of chance. A special hobby of mine has
always been auction sales. I dearly love to drop into auction-rooms
while sales are in progress, and bid up to the danger-point, taking care
to stop just in time to let some one else get the offered article. But
of course I sometimes failed to stop at the psychological moment, and
the result was a sudden realization that, in the course of the years, I
had accumulated an extraordinary number of articles for which I had no
shelter and no possible use.

The crown jewel of the collection was a bedroom set I had picked up in
Philadelphia. Usually, cautious friends accompanied me on my auction-room
expeditions and restrained my ardor; but this time I got away alone and
found myself bidding at the sale of a solid bog-wood bedroom set which
had been exhibited as a show-piece at the World's Fair, and was n