he stoutest
citizen of the county, waddled abnormally up the aisle: "The Almighty
must be gittin" a heap of fun out of Bill Snoddy to-night."

"Oh, Mr. Martin!" exclaimed Miss Tibbs, fluttering at his irreverence.

"Why, you would yourself. Miss Seliny," returned old Tom. Mr. Martin
always spoke in one key, never altering the pitch of his high, dry,
unctuous drawl, though, when his purpose was more than ordinarily
humorous, his voice assumed a shade of melancholy. Now and then he
meditatively passed his fingers through his gray beard, which followed
the line of his jaw, leaving his upper lip and most of his chin
smooth-shaven. "Did you ever reason out why folks laugh so much at fat
people?" he continued. "No, ma'am. Neither'd anybody else."

"Why is it, Mr. Martin?" asked Miss Selina.

"It's like the Creator's sayin', 'Let there be light.' He says,
'Let ladies be lovely--'" (Miss Tibbs bowed)--"and 'Let men-folks be
honest--sometimes;' and, 'Let fat people be held up to ridicule
till they fall off.' You can't tell why it is; it was jest ordained
that-a-way."

The room was so crowded that the juvenile portion of the assemblage was
ensconced in the windows. Strange to say, the youth of Plattville were
not present under protest, as their fellows of a metropolis would have
been, lectures being well understood by the young of great cities
to have instructive tendencies. The boys came to-night because they
insisted upon coming. It was an event. Some of them had made sacrifices
to come, enduring even the agony (next to hair-cutting in suffering) of
having their ears washed. Conscious of parental eyes, they fronted
the public with boyhood's professional expressionlessness, though they
communicated with each other aside in a cipher-language of their own,
and each group was a hot-bed of furtive gossip and sarcastic comment.
Seated in the windows, they kept out what small breath of air might
otherwise have stolen in to comfort the audience.

Their elders sat patiently dripping with perspiration, most of the
gentlemen undergoing the unusual garniture of stiffly-starched collars,
those who had not cultivated chin beards to obviate such arduous
necessities of pomp and state, hardly bearing up under the added anxiety
of cravats. However, they sat outwardly meek under the yoke; nearly all
of them seeking a quiet solace of tobacco--not that they smoked; Heaven
and the gallantry of Carlow County forbid--nor were there anywhere
vis