of it from any other."

"Perhaps he won't be here all the time to use his voice," whispered back
Flossy, without much idea what she was saying. The novelty of the scene
had stolen her senses.

Marion laughed softly.

"You blessed little idiot!" she said, "don't you know that he
manufactured Chautauqua, root and branch? Or if he didn't quite
manufacture the trees he looked after their growth, I dare say. Why,
this meeting is his darling, his idol, his best beloved. 'Hear him
speak?' I guess you will. I should like to see a meeting of this kind
that didn't hear from him. It will have to be when he is out of the
body."

"How do you know about him?" whispered Flossy, struck with sudden
curiosity.

"I've written him up," Marion said, briefly. "I've had to do it several
times. Oh, I'm a veteran at Sunday-school meetings. But he is the
hardest man to write about that there is among them, because you can
never tell what he may happen to say or do next. It will never do to
jump at his conclusions, and slip in a neat little sentence of your own
as coming from him if you don't happen to have taken very profuse notes,
because as sure as you do he will spring up in some tiresome meeting in
less than a week and unsay every single word that you said. He said--"

At this point a poor martyr, who had the misery to sit directly in front
of these two whisperers, turned and gave them such a look as only a man
can under like circumstances, and awed them into five minutes of quiet.
It lasted until Dr. Eggleston was announced. Then Marion's tongue broke
loose again:

"He is the 'Hoosier Schoolmaster.' Don't you know we read his book aloud
at the seminary? Looks as though he might have written it, doesn't he?
Let's listen to what he says. He always says a word or two that a body
can report; very few of them do."

This is a fair specimen of the way in which Miss Wilbur buzzed through
that meeting--that _wonderful_ meeting, that Flossy Shipley will
remember all her life. She made no answer to Marion's comments after a
little, and the pink flush glowed deeper on her face. She was
wonderfully interested--indeed she was more than interested. There was a
strange feeling of pain at her heart, a sort of sick, longing feeling
that she had never felt before, to understand what all these people
meant, to feel as they seemed to feel.

The Christian world is more to blame for the unspoken infidelity that
thrives in its circles than is generall