er with me.
We won't talk politics, but you shall see a nice little woman, who's
good enough to make my life happier, and after we've looked over my
stables, I'll bring you back to the city behind a gray mare that will
pass about anything there is on the road."

So Peter had a half day in the country and enjoyed it very much. He
looked over Mrs. Costell's flower-garden, in which she spent almost her
whole time, and chatted with her about it. He saw the beautiful stables,
and their still more beautiful occupants. He liked the couple very much.
Both were simple and silent people, of little culture, but it seemed to
Peter that the atmosphere had a gentle, homely tone that was very
pleasing. As he got into the light buggy, he said to Mrs. Costell:

"I'll get the seed of that mottled gillyflower from my mother as soon as
possible. Perhaps you'll let me bring it up myself?"

"Do," she said. "Come again, whether you get the seed or not."

After they had started, Mr. Costell said: "I'm glad you asked that. Mrs.
Costell doesn't take kindly to many of the men who are in politics with
me, but she liked you, I could see."

Peter spoke twice in the next week in small halls in his ward. He had
good audiences, and he spoke well, if simply.

"There ain't no fireworks in his stuff," said the ward satirist. "He
don't unfurl the American flag, nor talk about liberty and the
constitution. He don't even speak of us as noble freemen. He talks just
as if he thought we was in a saloon. A feller that made that speech
about the babies ought to treat us to something moving."

That was what many of the ward thought. Still they went because they
wanted to see if he wouldn't burst out suddenly. They felt that Peter
had unlimited potentialities in the way of eloquence (for eloquence to
them meant the ability to move the emotions) and merely saved his
powers. Without quite knowing it they found what he had to say
interesting. He brought the questions at issue straight back to
elementary forms. He showed just how each paragraph in the platform
would directly affect, not the state, but the "district."

"He's thoroughly good," the party leaders were told. "If he would abuse
the other side a little more, and stick in a little tinsel and calcium
light he would be great."

So he was called upon to speak elsewhere in the city. He worked at one
of the polls on election day, and was pleased to find that he was able
to prevent a little of the "trading