ckingly sour, or bitter. The "Jonahs" looked precisely like
the others and were mixed with the others on the platter which was
passed at table, for each one to take his or her choice. And the rule
was that whoever got the "Jonah pie" must either eat it, or crawl under
the table for a foot-stool for the others during the rest of the meal!

What they actually put in the two "Jonahs," this time, was wheat bran
mixed with cayenne pepper--an awful dose such as no mortal mouth could
possibly bear up under! It is needless to say that the girls usually
kept an eye on the Jonah pie or placed some slight private mark on it,
so as not to get it themselves.

When we were alone and had something particularly good on the table,
Addison and Theodora had a habit of making up rhymes about it, before
passing it around, and sometimes the rest of us attempted to join in the
recreation, generally with indifferent success. Kate Edwards had come in
that day, and being invited to remain to our feast of fried pies, was
contributing her wit to the rhyming contest, when chancing to glance out
of the window, Ellen espied a gray horse and buggy with the top turned
back, standing in the yard, and in the buggy a large elderly,
dark-complexioned man, a stranger to all of us, who sat regarding the
premises with a smile of shrewd and pleasant contemplation.

"Now who in the world can that be?" exclaimed Ellen in low tones. "I do
believe he has overheard some of those awful verses you have been making
up."

"But someone must go to the door," Theodora whispered. "Addison, you go
out and see what he has come for."

"He doesn't look just like a minister," said Halstead.

"Nor just like a doctor," Kate whispered. "But he is somebody of
consequence, I know, he looks so sort of dignified and experienced."

"And what a good, old, broad, distinguished face," said Ellen.

Thus their sharp young eyes took an inventory of our caller, who, I may
as well say here, was Hannibal Hamlin, recently Vice-President of the
United States and one of the most famous anti-slavery leaders of the
Republican party before the Civil War.

The old Hamlin homestead, where Hannibal Hamlin passed his boyhood, was
at Paris Hill, Maine, eight or ten miles to the eastward of the Old
Squire's farm; he and the Old Squire had been young men together, and at
one time quite close friends and classmates at Hebron Academy.

In strict point of fact, Mr. Hamlin's term of office as Vice-Pre