countenance of a prelate and the conscience of a buccaneer. His
grandfather--it was at this old gentleman, for lack of information, he
was compelled to stop his ancestral count--was a farmer in his day.
Also, personally, he had been the soul of ignorance and religion, and of
a narrowness touching Scriptural things that oft got him into trouble.

Grandfather Hanway read his Bible and believed it. He held that the
earth was flat; that it had four corners; and that the sun went around
the earth. He replied to a neighbor who assured him that the earth
revolved, by placing a pan of water on his gate-post. Not a drop was
spilled, not a spoonful missing, in the morning. He showed this to the
astronomical neighbor as refutatory of that theory of revolution.

"For," said Grandfather Hanway, with a logical directness which among
the world's greatest has more than once found parallel, "if the y'earth
had turned over in the night like you allow, that water would have done
run out."

When the astronomical one undertook a counter argument, Grandfather
Hanway fell upon him with the blind, unreasoning fury of a holy war and
beat him beyond expression. After that Grandfather Hanway was left
undisturbed in his beliefs and their demonstrations, and tilled his sour
acres and begat a son.

The son, Hiram Hanway, was sly and lazy, and not wanting in a gift for
making money that was rather the fruit of avarice than any general
length and breadth and depth of native wit. Having occasion to visit, as
a young man, the little humdrum capital of his State, he stayed there,
and engaged in the trade of lobbyist before the name was coined. He,
too, married, and had children--Patrick Henry Hanway and Barbara Hanway.