" suggested Bess.

"You think it would be more dramatic? Well, maybe so, maybe so. Ladies
and Gentlemen: I have here a gift for the Winsted Public Library. It
comes most appropriately on this evening, when the original supporters
of that institution are celebrating their release from its
responsibility! Miss Symonds," indicating Bess with a graceful curve of
his thumb, "and myself were proceeding hither to join you. Our way led
us past the spacious edifice dedicated now to the Cause of Learning and
Recreation, having once been given over to hats, and later still, as
many now present remember, to rats! The library is, as some of you are
aware, not open on Wednesday evenings. Therefore we were surprised to
see standing before the door in an attitude of patient expectancy, a
rustic gentleman, bearing in his arm this identical parcel. We hesitated
and then remarked courteously to the gentleman that there was small hope
of his obtaining satisfaction at that particular portal before to-morrow
afternoon. His face fell. Seeing which phenomenon, Miss Symonds," again
the thumb curve, "being of a kindly nature, offered sympathy to the
disappointed reader. He opened his heart to us--and also his bundle. It
seems he was not there to borrow books, but to bestow blessings. The
article herein contained was destined by his wife, its maker, to adorn
the library's walls."

"He said," interrupted Bess, "that he was sure we didn't have anything
like it, because his wife invented it, and he didn't know as there was
another in the world, even. He seemed to think the library was a kind of
museum and every one was sending things, and he and 'wife' wanted to,
too. He was a dear old man. So clean, and he wore a red shawl around his
neck this hot night--" Bess tossed her own bare head at the thought, and
fanned her pretty white shoulders. "Do show it to them, Archie, and
don't make fun. He really thought we would think it was lovely, and it
certainly is unusual."

"Open it, open it!"

Archie dropped to one knee, cut the string, and, removing one paper
after another, lifted slowly a hoop bound in red wool, from which
depended twenty fat little birds made of scraps of velvet.

Silence and bewilderment. Then, "What's it for?" faltered some one.

"We must explain it," said Bess laughing. "They don't understand.
Neither did we, at first. It's not for anything. It's just an ornament,
a beautiful parlor ornament. And you hang it from the chandelier