person of solemn appearance; a fat gold watch-chain which curved across
his ponderous front, adding mysteriously to his gravity. At his side
strolled a very tall, thin, rather stooping--though broad-shouldered--
rather shabby young man with a sallow, melancholy face and deep-set eyes
that looked tired. When they were seated, the orator looked over his
audience slowly and with an incomparable calm; then, as is always done, he
and the melancholy young man exchanged whispers for a few moments. After
this there was a pause, at the end of which the latter rose and announced
that it was his pleasure and his privilege to introduce, that evening, a
gentleman who needed no introduction to that assemblage. What citizen of
Carlow needed an introduction, asked the speaker, to the orator they had
applauded in the campaigns of the last twenty years, the statesman author
of the Halloway Bill, the most honored citizen of the neighboring and
flourishing county and city of Amo? And, the speaker would say, that if
there were one thing the citizens of Carlow could be held to envy the
citizens of Amo, it was the Honorable Kedge Halloway, the thinker, to
whose widely-known paper they were about to have the pleasure and
improvement of listening.

The introduction was so vehemently applauded that, had there been present
a person connected with the theatrical profession, he might have been
nervous for fear the introducer had prepared no encore. "Kedge is too
smart to take it all to himself," commented Mr. Martin. "He knows it's
half account of the man that said it."

He was not mistaken. Mr. Halloway had learned a certain perceptiveness on
the stump. Resting one hand upon his unfolded notes upon the table, he
turned toward the melancholy young man (who had subsided into the small of
his back in his chair) and, after clearing his throat, observed with
sudden vehemence that he must thank his gifted friend for his flattering