sacrifice,' and I don' know
what all; 'hope' and 'love,' I expect. Wall, them's good lamps to light
up anythin' by; only I don't make out whatever they kin have to do with
buildin's." He picked up an other volume.

"What's this?" said he. "'Tain't _my_ native tongue. What do ye call
it, Lois?"

"That is French, Mr. Midgin."

"That's French, eh?" said he, turning over the leaves. "I want to know!
Don't look as though there was any sense in it. What is it about, now?"

"It is a story of a man who was king of Rome a great while ago."

"King o' Rome! What was his name? Not Romulus and Remus, I s'pose?"

"No; but he came just after Romulus."

"Did, hey? Then you s'pose there ever _was_ sich a man as Romulus?"

"Probably," Mrs. Barclay now said. "When a story gets form and lives,
there is generally some thing of fact to serve as foundation for it."

"You think that?" said the carpenter. "Wall, I kin tell you stories
that had form enough and life enough in 'em, to do a good deal o' work;
and that yet grew up out o' nothin' but smoke. There was Governor
Denver; he was governor o' this state for quite a spell; and he was a
Shampuashuh man, so we all knew him and thought lots o' him. He was sot
against drinking. Mebbe you don't think there's no harm in wine and the
like?"

"I have not been accustomed to think there was any harm in it
certainly, unless taken immoderately."

"Ay, but how're you goin' to fix what's moderately? there's the pinch.
What's a gallon for me's only a pint for you. Wall, Governor Denver
didn't believe in havin' nothin' to do with the blamed stuff; and he
had taken the pledge agin it, and he was known for an out and out
temperance man; teetotal was the word with him. Wall, his daughter was
married, over here at New Haven; and they had a grand weddin', and a
good many o' the folks was like you, they thought there was no harm in
it, if one kept inside the pint, you know; and there was enough for
everybody to hev had his gallon. And then they said the Governor had
taken his glass to his daughter's health, or something like that. Wall,
all Shampuashuh was talkin' about it, and Governor Denver's friends was
hangin' their heads, and didn't know what to say; for whatever a man
thinks,--and thoughts is free,--he's bound to stand to what he _says_,
and particularly if he has taken his oath upon it. So Governor Denver's
friends was as worried as a steam-vessel in a fog, when she can't hear
the 'larm bells