From time immemorial the history of the popular hero has ever been the
same. To king and patriot, to the favorite girl at school and the small
boy who is leader of the "gang," to politician, to preacher, to actor
and author, comes first worship then eclipse. The great Napoleon did not
escape this common fate; and the public idol who was kissed only
yesterday for his gallant deeds is scorned to-day for having permitted
the kissing. Oh, caprice of the human heart! Oh, cry of the race for the
unaccustomed!

From that first anniversary of his entrance into the Home, Abraham felt
his popularity decrease--in fact more than decrease. He saw the
weather-vane go square about, and where he had known for three hundred
and sixty-five days the gentle, balmy feel of the southwest zephyr, he
found himself standing of a sudden in a cold, bleak northeast wind. The
change bewildered the old man, and reacted on his disposition. As he had
blossomed in the sunshine, so now he began to droop in the shade.
Feeling that he was suspected and criticized, he began to grow
suspicious and fault-finding himself. His old notion that he had no
right to take a woman's place in the Institution came back to his brain,
and he would brood over it for hours at a time, sitting out on the
porch with his pipe and Angy.

The old wife grieved to think that Father was growing old and beginning
to show his years. She made him some tansy tea, but neither her
persuasions nor those of the whole household could induce him to take
it. He had never liked "doctoring" anyway, although he had submitted to
it more or less during the past year in unconscious subservience to his
desire to increase his popularity; but now he fancied that where once he
had been served as a king by all these female attendants, he was simply
being "pestered" as a punishment for his past behavior with Blossy. Ah,