devoured half her life, like that of other American
house-keepers. "Be gentle, but let them know their place, my
dear!" The class having its type and exponent in Joel, stopped
at the door, and hitched up its suspenders.

"That will DO, Joel," with a stern suavity.

Some idea was in Joel's head under the brush of red
hair,--probably the "anarchic element."

"Uh was wishin' toh read the G'zette." Whereupon he advanced into
the teeth of the enemy and bore off the newspaper, going before
Margret, as she went to the kitchen, and seating himself beside a
flaring tallow-candle on the table.

Reading, with Joel, was not the idle pastime that more trivial
minds find it; a thing, on the contrary, to be gone into with
slow spelling, and face knitted up into savage sternness,
especially now, when, as he gravely explained to Margret, "in HIS
opinion the crissis was jest at hand, and ev'ry man must be
seein' ef the gover'ment was carryin' out the views of the
people."

With which intent, Joel, in company with five thousand other
sovereigns, consulted, as definitive oracle, "The Daily Gazette"
of Towbridge. The school-master need not have grumbled for the
old time: feodality in the days of Warwick and of "The Daily
Gazette" was not so widely different as he and Joel thought.

Now and then, partly as an escape-valve for his overcharged