lan_" and "_Reminiscences of
James G. Blaine_."

These not only awakened local interest, but they began to be clipped and
quoted in outside newspapers, even in Boston and New York. A reporter
was sent down from Boston to "write up" the old Captain. It was quite a
triumph. The Captain began to have visitors, old friends and old
citizens, as he had never had before. They became almost a nuisance in
the office. But the Captain was in his element: he thrived on it; his
eye brightened; he walked, if possible, still more erect. His very mood,
indeed, for his fighting blood was up, gave us some difficult problems.
Nearly every week he would pause in the course of his narrative to smite
the Democratic party, to cry "Fudge" at flying machines, or to visit his
scorn upon the "initiative, referendum and recall." And one week he cut
loose grandly upon woman suffrage, after he had first expressed his
chivalric admiration for the "gentle sex" and quoted Sir Walter Scott:

"Oh, woman, in our hours of ease
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please," etc., etc.

Nort brought me the copy, laughing.

"I asked the Captain," he said, "if he thought Anthy was uncertain, coy,
and hard to please."

"What did he say?"

"He waved me aside. 'Oh, Anthy!' he said, as if she did not count at
all. You know how the Captain lays down the eternal laws of life and
then lets all his personal friends break 'em!... What would you do
about the passage, anyway?"

"Why print it," I said. "It's the old Captain himself."

And print it we did.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XVII

IN WHICH CERTAIN DEEP MATTERS OF THE HEART ARE PRESENTED

Ed Smith and Nort must have tried Anthy terribly in these days, Nort
probably far more than Ed, because he was a more complicated human
being, less broken to any sort of harness, and blest (or cursed) with an
amazing gift of intimacy. Like many people who live most vividly within,
he never seemed to have any proper idea of the lines which separate
human beings. To some conventional natures the most refined meanings
attach to their "Good mornings" and "How-d'ye does," and their
confidences, shut away in a close inner sanctum, like the high court of
a secret society, are only to be approached ceremonially by those who
have the insignia and the password; and where, having arrived and
expecting hidden wonders and beauties, you discover only still more
ceremonial. A truly conventional person cuts the same at the core as