room."

At first I had a feeling that I was going to be at great cost for
clothing him. But it proved, of course, at once, that, whenever he was
out, I should be at home. And I went, during the bright period of his
success, to so few of those awful pageants which require a black
dress-coat and what the ungodly call, after Mr. Dickens, a white
choker, that in the happy retreat of my own dressing-gowns and jackets
my days went by as happily and cheaply as those of another Thalaba.
And Polly declares there was never a year when the tailoring cost so
little. He lived (Dennis, not Thalaba) in his wife's room over the
kitchen. He had orders never to show himself at that window. When he
appeared in the front of the house, I retired to my sanctissimum and
my dressing-gown. In short, the Dutchman and, his wife, in the old
weather-box, had not less to do with, each other than he and I. He
made the furnace-fire and split the wood before daylight; then he went
to sleep again, and slept late; then came for orders, with a red silk
bandanna tied round his head, with his overalls on, and his dress-coat
and spectacles off. If we happened to be interrupted, no one guessed
that he was Frederic Ingham as well as I; and, in the neighborhood,
there grew up an impression that the minister's Irishman worked
day-times in the factory village at New Coventry. After I had given
him his orders, I never saw him till the next day.

I launched him by sending him to a meeting of the Enlightenment Board.
The Enlightenment Board consists of seventy-four members, of whom
sixty-seven are necessary to form a quorum. One becomes a member under
the regulations laid down in old Judge Dudley's will. I became one by
being ordained pastor of a church in Naguadavick. You see you cannot
help yourself, if you would. At this particular time we had had four
successive meetings, averaging four hours each--wholly occupied in
whipping in a quorum. At the first only eleven men were present; at
the next, by force of three circulars, twenty-seven; at the third,
thanks to two days' canvassing by Auchmuty and myself, begging men to
come, we had sixty. Half the others were in Europe. But without a
quorum we could do nothing. All the rest of us waited grimly for our
four hours, and adjourned without any action. At the fourth meeting we
had flagged, and only got fifty-nine together. But on the first
appearance of my double--whom I sent on this fatal Monday to the fifth
meetin