said kindly. He regretted that the General could not stay; he "would
have liked him to know his friends."

"They are not such bad fellows, after all. Why, one of them is a
preacher," he said jocularly as he walked to the door, "and a very
bright fellow. J. Quincy Plume is regarded as a man of great ability."

"Yes, sir; I have heard of him. His doctrine is from the 'Wicked Bible';
he omits the 'not.' Good morning." And General Keith bowed himself out.

When the guests arrived, Mr. Wickersham admitted to himself that they
were a strange lot of "assorted statesmen." He was rather relieved that
the General had not remained. When he looked about the table that
evening, after the juleps were handed around and the champagne had
followed, he was still more glad. The set of old Richard's head and the
tilt of his nose were enough to face. An old and pampered hound in the
presence of a pack of puppies could not have been more disdainful.

The preacher he had mentioned, Mr. J. Quincy Plume, was one of the
youngest members of the party and one of the most striking--certainly
one of the most convivial and least abashed. Mr. Plume had, to use his
own expression, "plucked a feather from many wings, and bathed his
glistening pinions in the iridescent light of many orbs." He had been
"something of a doctor"; then had become a preacher--to quote him again,
"not exactly of the gospel as it was understood by mossbacked
theologians, of 'a creed outworn,'" but rather the "gospel of the new
dispensation, of the new brotherhood--the gospel of liberty, equality,
fraternity." Now he had found his true vocation, that of statesmanship,
where he could practise what he had preached; could "bask in the light
of the effulgent sun of progress, and, shod with the sandals of Mercury,