gentlemen," he began, shoving up his spectacles, and sucking
his lips over his white teeth to keep them in place, "ladies and
gentlemen, young men and maidens, raley I'm obleeged to Mr. Means fer
this honor," and the Squire took both hands and turned the top of his
head round half an inch. Then he adjusted his spectacles. Whether he was
obliged to Mr. Means for the honor of being compared to a donkey was not
clear. "I feel in the inmost compartments of my animal spirits a most
happifying sense of the success and futility of all my endeavors to
sarve the people of Flat Creek deestrick, and the people of Tomkins
township, in my weak way and manner." This burst of eloquence was
delivered with a constrained air and an apparent sense of a danger that
he, Squire Hawkins, might fall to pieces in his weak way and manner,
and of the success and futility of all attempts at reconstruction. For
by this time the ghastly pupil of the left eye, which was black, was
looking away round to the left, while the little blue one on the right
twinkled cheerfully toward the front. The front teeth would drop down so
that the Squire's mouth was kept nearly closed, and his words whistled
through.

"I feel as if I could be grandiloquent on this interesting occasion,"
twisting his scalp round, "but raley I must forego any such exertions.
It is spelling you want. Spelling is the corner-stone, the grand,
underlying subterfuge, of a good eddication. I put the spellin'-book
prepared by the great Daniel Webster alongside the Bible. I do, raley. I
think I may put it ahead of the Bible. For if it wurn't fer
spellin'-books and sich occasions as these, where would the Bible be? I
should like to know. The man who got up, who compounded this work of
inextricable valoo was a benufactor to the whole human race or any
other." Here the spectacles fell off. The Squire replaced them in some
confusion, gave the top of his head another twist, and felt of his glass
eye, while poor Shocky stared in wonder, and Betsey Short rolled from
side to side in the effort to suppress her giggle. Mrs. Means and the
other old ladies looked the applause they could not speak.

"I app'int Larkin Lanham and Jeems Buchanan fer captings," said the
Squire. And the two young men thus named took a stick and tossed it from
hand to hand to decide which should have the "first choice." One tossed
the stick to the other, who held it fast just where he happened to catch
it. Then the first placed