without representation is tyranny."

"Sally, go into the house," commanded Miss Mitty, "I cannot permit you
to hear such dangerous sentiments expressed."

"Let me go, Sister Mitty," said Miss Matoaca, for the flash of spirit
had left her as wan and drooping as a blighted flower; "I will go
myself," and turning meekly, she left the kitchen, while Sally took a
second cake from the oven and came over to where I stood.

"I'll just put this into your basket anyway," she remarked, "even if you
don't care about it."

"Come, child," urged Miss Mitty, waiting, "but give the boy his cake
first."

The cake was put into my hands, not into the basket, and I took a large,
delicious mouthful of it while I went by the meek wallflowers standing
in a row, like prim maiden ladies, against the old grey house.

CHAPTER VII

IN WHICH I MOUNT THE FIRST RUNG OF THE LADDER

As I passed through the gate and turned down Franklin Street under a
great sycamore that grew midway of the pavement, I vowed passionately in
my heart that I would remain "a common boy" no longer. With the plum
cake in my hand, and the delicious taste of it in my mouth, I placed my
basket on the ground and leaned against the silvery body of the tree,
with my eyes on Samuel, sitting very erect, with his paws held up, his
tail wagging, and his expectant gaze on my face.

"What can we do about it, Samuel? How can we begin? Are we common to the
bone, I wonder? and how are we going to change?"

But Samuel's thoughts were on the last bit of cake, and when I gave it
to him, he stopped begging like a wise dog that has what he wanted, and
lay down on the sidewalk with his eyes closed and his nose between his
outstretched paws.

A gentle wind stirred overhead, and I smelt the sharp sweet fragrance of
the sycamore, which cast a delicate lace-work of shadows on the crooked
brick pavement. Not only the great sycamore and myself and Samuel, but
the whole blossoming city appeared to me in a dream; and as I glanced
down the quiet street, over which the large, slow shadows moved to and
fro, I saw through a mist the blurred grey-green foliage in the Capitol
Square. In the ground the seeds of the new South, which was in truth but
the resurrected spirit of the old, still germinated in darkness. But the
air, though I did not know it, was already full of the promise of the
industrial awakening, the constructive impulse, the recovered energy,
that was yet to be, and in which