s, and they had dripped onto her cake
so it looked just awful! and that red-headed Sneeze had squeezed her
jelly-cake into flap-jacks, most likely by settin' on the basket. I
never see anybody so cut up in my life; her face was redder than a
beet."

And Mrs. Dodson said to the Deacon that night, "I did feel despritly
morterfied over my squashed vittles, with Mis' Pogue a-lookin' on with
all her eyes."

But when "the orator of the day" ate of her rusk, and said, "Mrs.
Dodson, these rusk have a peculiar taste, just such as those my dead
mother used to make for me when I was a boy, and I want you to give me
the recipe for my wife," and he took it down in his note-book, there was
full compensation for all her trials.

When all had eaten all they could, the young folk and children swung,
played ball, or "chased the squirrel" with the delightful penalty of
kissing it when caught, or rambled about at will, while the mothers
gathered the dishes together, and exchanged recipes and confidential
remarks on somebody's cookin'.

By four o'clock the babies were fretful; children of Bubby's age
complained that their shoes and clothes were too tight; somebody
suggested going home. In vain the young people protested--an hour from
that time the grounds were deserted; the lumber of the stage, made
sacred by such oratory, had been gathered up with the seats and tables,
and where so much of life had been, all was silence.

A neighbor's hired man was riding home with the Dodsons, but as Mrs.
Dodson did not mind him, she at once began to congratulate her husband
on his maiden speech. "Cappen Buzwell said you made the best oration
there was made to-day, Deacon. Did you pay 'tention, Sneeze, an' hear
what he said 'bout your father's speakin'?"

The Deacon modestly put in a faint, "Now, mother, don't," but she
interrupted him: "Yis I shall, for it's so, father, an' I'm goin' to say
my say. Besides, he told me, with tears in his eyes, that my rusk tasted
just like his dead mother's. But ef you'd only seen him tryin' to eat
one o' Mis' Pogue's doughnuts as if they was real good, when I could see
they was half chokin' of him!"

"That there man from town did make a purty considerable speech," said
the Deacon; "not so hefty as some I've heard, but real instructing. It
made me feel as though I wanted to fight somebody--purty much as I used
to when I was a boy, and heard my father tell how he fit in the war of
eighteen hundred and twelve, and