ral--the product
of the quarries in The Gore!"

Deafening applause, clinking of glasses, and cries of "Good!
True--Hear--Hear!"

The Colonel beamed and gathered himself together with a visible effort
for his peroration. He laid his hand on his heart.

"A man of feeling, gentlemen, has a heart. He is not oblivious either of
the needs of his neighbor, his community, or the world in general.
Although he is vulnerable to wounds in the house of his friends,"--a
severe look falls upon Wiggins,--"he is not impervious to appeal for
sympathy from without. I trust I have defined a man of feeling,
gentlemen, a man of heart, as regards the world in general. And now, to
make an abrupt descent from the abstract to the concrete, from the
general to the particular, I will permit myself to say that those
aspersions cast upon me fourteen years ago as a mere promoter,
irrespective of my manhood, hurt me as a man of feeling--a man of heart.

"Sir--" he turned again to Elmer Wiggins who was apparently the
lightning conductor for the Colonel's fourteen years of pent-up
injury--"a father has his feelings. You are _not_ a father--I draw no
conclusions; but _if_ you had been a father fourteen years ago in this
very room, I would have trusted to your magnanimity not to give
expression to your decided views on the subject of the native Americans'
intermarriage with those of a race foreign to us. I assure you, sir,
such a view not only narrows the mind, but constricts humanity, and
ossifies the heart--that special organ by which the world, despite
present-day detractors, lives and moves and has its being." (Murmuring
assent.)

"But, sir, I believe you have come to see otherwise, else as my guest on
this happy occasion, I should not permit myself to apply to you so
personal a remark. And, gentlemen," the Colonel swelled visibly, but
those nearest him caught the shimmer of a suspicious moisture in his
eyes, "I am in a position to-night--this night whereon you have added to
my happiness by your presence at this board--to repeat now what I said
fourteen years ago in this very room: I consider myself honored in that
a member of my immediate family, one very, very dear to me," his voice
shook in spite of his effort to strengthen it, "is contemplating
entering into the solemn estate of matrimony at no distant date with--a
foreigner, gentlemen, but a naturalized citizen of our great and
glorious United States. Gentlemen," he filled his glass again a