impression by tendering everybody cigars. Then the "Tonsorial Parlor"
and its patrons waiting for a Sunday-morning shave became a truly
genteel function. Willy Eddy, who was dreamily imaginative, and read
the Sunday papers when his Minna gave him a chance and did not chide
him for the waste of money, remembered things he had read about the
swagger New York clubs. He smoked away and made-believe he was a
clubman, and enjoyed himself artlessly. The sun got farther around
and the south window was a sheet of burning radiance. It became
rather too warm, and on Carroll making a motion to move his chair
into the shade, every other man moved into the sunshine, and sat
sweltering and smoking in a fatuous vainglory. The canary bird
hopped faster and faster. The gold-fishes swam with a larger
school of bright reflections. A bumblebee flew in the open window
and buzzed dangerously near the hero's head. Willy Eddy rose and,
ostentatiously, at his own risk, drove the intruder away, and was
gratefully thanked. Truly hero-worship, while it is often foolish and
fool-making, is not the worst sentiment of mankind. When the great
man made a move to order his coachman to take the wonderful rig away,
and drive, because the horses were restive and needed exercise, and
he himself--the delicate humor of the thing--also needed exercise and
would walk home, Amidon sped in his service as he had never sped in
the service of the long-suffering wife, at that moment struggling
painfully with the Sunday dinner, and bringing wood from the shed to
replenish the fire.

Carroll did not need to lead up to his mining and other interests.
The subject was broached at once by the others. The postmaster opened
it. He spoke with less humility than the others, as being more on a
footing of equality.