this extraordinary and unlooked-for audience, among whom he spied many
who had thought it wiser not to protest against the dictum of the
first citizen, and many who had professed to believe that the teacher's
connection with Jethro Bass was a good and sufficient reason for
dismissal. The judge was prepared to take advantage of the tide,
whatever its cause.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "I take the liberty of calling this
meeting to order. And before a chairman be elected, I mean to ask your
indulgence to explain my purposes in requesting the use of this hall
to-night. In our system of government, the inalienable and most precious
gift--"

Whatever the gift was, the judge never explained. He paused at the
words, and repeated them, and stopped altogether because no one was
paying any attention to him. The hall was almost full, the people
had risen, with a hum, and as one man had turned toward the door. Mr.
Gamaliel Ives was triumphantly marching down the aisle, and with him
was--well, another person. Nay, personage would perhaps be the better
word.

Let us go back for a moment. There descended from that train of which
we have heard the whistle a lady with features of no ordinary moulding,
with curls and a string bonnet and a cloak that seemed strangely
to harmonize with the lady's character. She had the way of one in
authority, and Mr. Sherman himself ran to open the door of his only
closed carriage, and the driver galloped off with her all the way to the
Brampton House. Once there, the lady seized the pen as a soldier seizes
the sword, and wrote her name in most uncompromising characters on the
register, Miss Lucretia Penniman, Boston. Then she marched up to her
room.

Miss Lucretia Penniman, author of the "Hymn to Coniston," in the
reflected glory of whose fame Brampton had shone for thirty years!
Whose name was lauded and whose poem was recited at every Fourth of
July celebration, that the very children might learn it and honor its
composer! Stratford-on-Avon is not prouder of Shakespeare than Brampton
of Miss Lucretia, and now she was come back, unheralded, to her
birthplace. Mr. Raines, the clerk, looked at the handwriting on the
book, and would not believe his own sight until it was vouched for by
sundry citizens who had followed the lady from the station--on foot. And
then there was a to-do.

Send for Mr. Gamaliel Ives; send for Miss Bruce, the librarian; send
for Mr. Page, editor of the Clarion, and no