bout the fair women of the Southland, and by absolutely
avoiding all metaphors, tropes, synecdoches, or anacolutha. Mr. Pond
assaulted the Mayor's apotheosis of charity, particularly as applied to
his own institution. He described the Settlement, not as a dispensary
for old clothes, but as a cultivated personality, an enlightened elder
brother gone to live with the poor. It aspired to enrich life through
living, said he, to bring light to the disinherited and the gift of a
wider horizon....

Mr. Pond followed his thought with more imagination than one might have
thought him to possess, and with a glow on his dark face such as had not
been observed there the other day. Cally, from the next to the last row,
listened attentively enough; she recalled that she would see Mr. Pond
this evening, perhaps sit next to him, at mamma's Settlement dinner.
However, she reserved her chief interest for Hen's friend V.V., who was
so merciless in his attitude toward those who were not poor. Mr. Pond
spoke straightforwardly, not to say bluntly. But she pictured Vivian as
shaking the rafters with his shameless homicides and God-pity-yous....

"Once the bread and meat question's settled, money is of secondary
importance," said the Director's deep voice. "Let's get that well into
our heads. What the poor ask is that they shall not be born under
disadvantages which the labor of their lifetimes can never remove...."

Only these two speakers had been announced. When Pond sat down the
formal exercises were over. But as his applause died away, the president
of the club rose again, sure enough,--while Henrietta excitedly nudged
Carlisle,--and announced an added speaker, a guest of the club to-day,
whom she described as the young father of the Settlement. The
president--a tall, placid-faced woman, with a finely cut chin and a
magnificent crown of silver hair--had something to say about the spirit
of pure idealism; and was sure that the members would be glad to hear
remarks on the subject of the day from young Dr. Vivian, the missionary
doctor of the Dabney House....

The few kind words elicited somewhat perfunctory plaudits, despite Hen
Cooney's single-handed attempt to stampede them into a triumph. The
Clubbers, truth to tell, were by now disposed to leave oratory and the
uplift for small-talk and tea.

"_There he is_!" said Hen, clapping splendidly.

V. Vivian stood on the platform, beside a tall oak-stand and a
water-pitcher, gazing out ove