we despise not one of
these little ones because in heaven their angels do always behold the
face of our Father. And then he told his people of that little one who
had pretended to love dry bread when she couldn't get any butter--in
Appleboro. And who had gone to her rest holding to her thin breast a
rag-doll that was kin to her by bornation, Loujaney being poor folks
herself and knowing prezactly how't was.

Over the heads of loved and sheltered children the Baptist brethren
looked at each other. Of course, it wasn't their fault any more than
anybody else's.--In a very husky voice their pastor went on to tell
them of the curl which the woman who hadn't a God's thing left to
wish for had given as a remembrance to "that good and kind man, our
brother John Flint, sometimes known as the Butterfly Man."

Dabney put the plain little discourse into print and heightened its
effect by an editorial couched in the plainest terms. We were none of
us in the humor to hear a spade called an agricultural implement just
then, and Dabney knew it; particularly when the mill dividends and the
cemetery both showed a marked increase.

Something had to be done, and quickly, but we didn't exactly know how
nor where to begin doing it. Laurence, insisting that this was really
everybody's business, called a mass-meeting at the schoolhouse, and
the _Clarion_ requested every man who didn't intend to bring his
women-folks to that meeting to please stay home himself. Wherefore
Appleboro town and county came with the wife of its bosom--or maybe
the wife came and fetched it along.

Laurence called the meeting to order, and his manner of addressing the
feminine portion of his audience would have made his gallant
grandfather challenge him. He hadn't a solitary pretty phrase to
tickle the ears of the ladies--he spoke of and to them as women.

"And did you see how they fell for him?" rejoiced the Butterfly Man,
afterward. "From the kid in a middy up to the great old girl with
three chins and a prow like an ocean liner, they were with him. When
you're in dead earnest, can the ladies; just go after women as women
and they're with you every time. They know."

A Civic Leaguer followed Laurence, then Madame, and after her a girl
from the mills, whose two small brothers went in one night. There
were no set speeches. Everybody who spoke had something to say; and
everybody who had something to say spoke. Then Westmoreland, who like
Saul the king was taller