it would be
possible to acquire any power over them."

"But surely you might go as far as any one in the advocacy of
Temperance."

"Temperance! Why, you forget that I must denounce Temperance as the
deadliest of sins, and proclaim Abstinence to be the only virtue. There
is a grand State Convention of Progressive Gladiators at present in
session in Foxden; all the neighboring towns have sent delegates. Well,
it was only yesterday afternoon that Stellato, in behalf of one of the
committees, denounced the clergy of New England as gross flesh-eaters
who had made themselves incapable of perceiving any spiritual truth. And
I happen to know that Mrs. Romulus so successfully manipulated Chepunic,
not a hundred miles up the river, that before leaving that town she
publicly delivered her lecture entitled, 'Marriage a Barbarism,' and
professed to have discovered something far higher and holier than the
chain of wedlock."

"I am sure that Miss Patience Hurribattle is ignorant of any such
tendency in these new doctrines," I exclaimed, indignantly.

"Doubtless she is," assented Clifton. "There is a hopeful,
simple-hearted gleam in her eye, a fine simplicity in her speech, which
betokens enthusiasm of a purely religious type. But she is banded with
those who would use religion only as a fiery stimulant to the intellect,
never as a balm to the heart."

A crunching upon the gravel-walk. A man and a woman were hurrying up to
the parsonage. The woman short, sharp, lean; the man unctious and
foxy,--yet also representing a chronic state of gelatinous bewilderment.
The Great Socialists,--I knew them at once.

"Triumph! triumph!" cried Mr. Stellato, bursting into the study. "Deacon
Greenlaw has been converted at last! He will make a holocaust of his
cider-mill!"

"He will signalize his submission to the Gladiators by a great Act of
Faith!" exclaimed Mrs. Romulus. "His cider-mill will be publicly burned
this afternoon at five o'clock. All the delegate Gladiators will march
in procession to the ground. Invitations have been sent to the Order of
Frugivorous Brothers, the Infants' Anti-Tobacco League,"--

"Two drops of the oil of tobacco will kill a tomcat of the largest
proportions," murmured Mr. Stellato, in choral parenthesis.

--"the Principal and Patients of the Lilac-Hill Water-Cure, the Children
of the Public Schools, the Millennial Choir, and Progressive Citizens
generally," said Mrs. Romulus, finishing her sentence.

"It is