d of the
office, and the office was getting somewhat tired of him. It occurred
to the members of the Society that a little fresh blood infused into
it might stir up the general vitality of the organization. The woman
suffragists saw no reason why the place of Secretary need as a matter of
course be filled by a person of the male sex. They agitated, they
made domiciliary visits, they wrote notes to influential citizens, and
finally announced as their candidate the young lady who had won and
worn the school name of "The Terror," who was elected. She was just the
person for the place: wide awake, with all her wits about her, full of
every kind of knowledge, and, above all, strong on points of order and
details of management, so that she could prompt the presiding officer,
to do which is often the most essential duty of a Secretary. The
President, the worthy rector, was good at plain sailing in the track of
the common moralities and proprieties, but was liable to get muddled
if anything came up requiring swift decision and off-hand speech. The
Terror had schooled herself in the debating societies of the Institute,
and would set up the President, when he was floored by an awkward
question, as easily as if he were a ninepin which had been bowled over.

It has been already mentioned that the Pansophian Society received
communications from time to time from writers outside of its own
organization. Of late these had been becoming more frequent. Many of
them were sent in anonymously, and as there were numerous visitors to
the village, and two institutions not far removed from it, both full
of ambitious and intelligent young persons, it was often impossible
to trace the papers to their authors. The new Secretary was alive with
curiosity, and as sagacious a little body as one might find if in want
of a detective. She could make a pretty shrewd guess whether a paper was
written by a young or old person, by one of her own sex or the other, by
an experienced hand or a novice.

Among the anonymous papers she received was one which exercised her
curiosity to an extraordinary degree. She felt a strong suspicion that
"the Sachem," as the boat-crews used to call him, "the Recluse," "the
Night-Hawk," "the Sphinx," as others named him, must be the author of
it. It appeared to her the production of a young person of a reflective,
poetical turn of mind. It was not a woman's way of writing; at least,
so thought the Secretary. The writer had tr