not expressing an opinion whether it would be good or bad. I should
like to live out my own time, though I acknowledge that you Assembly
men have on your shoulders the responsibility of deciding whether I
shall do so or not. You could lead me away and deposit me without any
trouble, because I am not popular. But the people are beginning to
talk about Eva Crasweller and Abraham Grundle, and I tell you that
all the volunteers you have in Britannula will not suffice to take
the old man to the college, and to keep him there till you have
polished him off. He would be deposited again at Little Christchurch
in triumph, and the college would be left a wreck behind him."

This view of the case was peculiarly distressing to me. As the
chief magistrate of the community, nothing is so abhorrent to me as
rebellion. Of a populace that are not law-abiding, nothing but evil
can be predicted; whereas a people who will obey the laws cannot but
be prosperous. It grieved me greatly to be told that the inhabitants
of Gladstonopolis would rise in tumult and destroy the college merely
to favour the views of a pretty girl. Was there any honour, or worse
again, could there be any utility, in being the President of a
republic in which such things could happen? I left my friend Ruggles
in the street, and passed on to the executive hall in a very painful
frame of mind.

When there, tidings reached me of a much sadder nature. At the very
moment at which I had been talking with Ruggles in the street on the
subject, a meeting had been held in the market-place with the express
purpose of putting down the Fixed Period; and who had been the chief
orator on the occasion but Jack Neverbend! My own son had taken upon
himself this new work of public speechifying in direct opposition to
his own father! And I had reason to believe that he was instigated
to do so by my own wife! "Your son, sir, has been addressing the
multitude about the Fixed Period, and they say that it has been quite
beautiful to hear him." It was thus that the matter was told me by
one of the clerks in my office, and I own that I did receive some
slight pleasure at finding that Jack could do something beyond
cricket. But it became immediately necessary to take steps to
stop the evil, and I was the more bound to do so because the only
delinquent named to me was my own son.

"If it be so," I said aloud in the office, "Jack Neverbend shall
sleep this night in prison." But it did not occur