ascending the platform very red in the face, and looking out upon the
assembled voters of Sevenoaks, he asked with a trembling voice:

"What is the further pleasure of the meeting?"

"I move you," said Mr. Belcher, rising, and throwing open his overcoat,
"that the Rev. Solomon Snow, whom I am exceedingly glad to see present,
open our deliberations with prayer."

The moderator, forgetting apparently that the motion had not been put,
thereupon invited the reverend gentleman to the platform, from which,
when his service had been completed, he with dignity retired--but with
the painful consciousness that in some way Mr. Belcher had become aware
of the philanthropic task he had undertaken. He knew he was beaten, at
the very threshold of his enterprise--that his conversations of the
morning among his neighbors had been reported, and that Paul Benedict
and his fellow-sufferers would be none the better for him.

The business connected with the various articles of the warrant was
transacted without notable discussion or difference. Mr. Belcher's
ticket for town officers, which he took pains to show to those around
him, was unanimously adopted. When it came to the question of schools,
Mr. Belcher indulged in a few flights of oratory. He thought it
impossible for a town like Sevenoaks to spend too much money for
schools. He felt himself indebted to the public school for all that he
was, and all that he had won. The glory of America, in his view--its
pre-eminence above all the exhausted and decayed civilizations of the
Old World--was to be found in popular education. It was the
distinguishing feature of our new and abounding national life. Drop it,
falter, recede, and the darkness that now hangs over England, and the