en--no, let the baby alone, she isn't choking. If the Powers agree,
and the Democratic Party triumphs in November, I shall be Governor of
Virginia on the first of January."

His stepmother looked at him in a dazed way, her glance wandering from
his face to the baby with the string of spools. There was a pleased
light in her eyes, but he saw that she was striving in vain to grasp the
full significance of his words.

"Well, well," she said at last. "I al'ays told Amos you wa'nt no
fool--but who'd have thought it!"

IV

The Capitol building at Richmond stands on a slight eminence in a grassy
square, hiding its gray walls behind a stretch of elms and sycamores, as
if it had retreated into historic shadow before the ruthless advance of
the spirit of modernism. In the centre of the square, whose brilliant
green slopes are intersected by gravelled walks that shine silver in the
sunlight, the grave old building remains the one distinctive feature of
a city where Iconoclasm has walked with destroying feet.

A few years ago--so few that it is within the memory of the very
young--the streets leading from the Capitol were the streets of a
Southern town--bordered by hospitable Southern houses set in gardens
where old-fashioned flowers bloomed. Now the gardens are gone and the
houses are outgrown. Progress has passed, and in its wake there have
sprung up obvious structures of red brick with brownstone trimmings. The
young trees leading off into avenues of shade soften the harshness of an
architecture which would become New York, and which belongs as much to
Massachusetts as to Virginia.

The very girls who, on past summer afternoons, flitted in bareheaded
loveliness from door to door, have changed with the changing times. The
loveliness is perhaps more striking, less distinctive; with the
flower-like heads have passed the old grace and the old dependence, and
the undulatory walk has quickened into buoyant briskness. It is all
modern--as modern as the red brick walls that are building where a
quaint mansion has fallen.

But in the Capitol Square one forgets to-day and relives yesterday.
Beneath the calm eyes of the warlike statue of the First American little
children chase gray squirrels across the grass, and infant carriages with
beruffled parasols are drawn in white and pink clusters beside the
benches. Jefferson and Marshall, Henry and Nelson are secure in bronze
when mere greatness has decayed.

To the left of th