a drawback to manly rights.

Andrew Townley fell into an audible doze; he was the oldest inhabitant
and a respected citizen. He was given to periods of senile dementia
preceded or followed by flashes of almost superhuman intelligence. There
were times when, arousing suddenly from sleep, he would bring some
startling memory with him that would electrify his hearers. He was an
institution and a relic--every one revered him and looked to his simple
comfort. Suddenly now, as the dense silence enveloped the club, old
Andrew awoke and remarked vividly:

"I was a-dreaming of Theodore Starr!"

"Now what in thunder!" cried Tod Greeley, who had purposely refrained
from mentioning some part of his late visitor's conversation,--"what made
you think of--Theodore Starr?"

"I reckon," whined the trembling old voice, "that it was 'long o' Liza
Hope. I was a-passing by and I heard her calling on God-a'mighty to
stand by her in her hour. Theodore Starr was mighty pitiful of women in
their hours."

Mason Hope felt called upon, at this, to explain and apologize. He did
so with the patient air of one detached and disdainful.

"Liza do make a powerful scene when she is called to pass through her
trial. This is her ninth, and I done urged her to act sensible, but when
I saw how it was going with her, I just left her to reason it out along
her own lines. Sally Taber is sitting 'long of her ready to help when
the time comes. I done all I could." Tansey Moore nodded significantly.
He had an unreasonable wife of his own, and he had no sympathy with women
in their "hours."

"Theodore Starr, he done say," Townley was becoming lachrymose, "that
women got mighty nigh to God when they reached up to Him in their trial
and offered life for a life. He done say if God didn't forgive a woman
every earthly thing for such suffering, he was no good God. He done say
that to me onct."

"That be plain blasphemy," Tansey Moore remarked. "I reckon he was a
right poor parson. The religion he doctored with was all soothin' syrup
and mighty diluted at that, where women was concerned. I never trusted
that Yankee."

"The women, children, and old folks counted some on him in his day."
Greeley was getting interested in this heretofore myth. Moore nodded his
head suspiciously.

"They sho' did, and a mess they made of it. Did you ever hear 'bout his
mix-up with the Walden girls?"

Greeley never had and, as the last Walden "girl" was a woman