his typical
attendance, representative of the little city at its best, offered that
strange contrast of the sexes so notable in any American assemblage. The
men were ordinary of look and garb, astonishingly ordinary, if one might
use the term; stalwart enough, but slouchy, shapeless, and ill-clad. Not
so the women, who seemed as though of another and superior social world.
If here and there the face of a man seemed stolid, cloddish,
peasant-like, not so any of the half dozen faces of the women next
adjoining him. Type, class--call what you like that which is owned by
the average American woman, even of middle class--that distinction was
as obvious as is usual in all such gatherings. Scattered here and there
through this audience, as in any audience of even the humblest sort in
America, were a half dozen faces of young women, any of whom must have
been called very beautiful, strikingly beautiful--beautiful as Aurora
Lane must once have been.

The apparel of the men was nondescript. That of the women, however or
wherever secured, made them creatures apart. The men, too, sat
uncommunicative, silent; whereas their daughters or spouses turned,
chattering, laughing, waving a hand to this or that friend. In short,
the women availed themselves fully, as women will, of this opportunity
of social intercourse. And always, as head turned to head, there was a
look, a whispered word, of woman to woman. Little by little, in the
mysterious way of such assemblages, every woman in the house came to
know that Aurora Lane and her boy--who had only been hid, and not dead,
all these years--were seated on the back seat, next to Old Man Rawlins.
Did anyone ever hear the like of _that_? In reality Spring Valley was
out to hear the rest of the news about Aurora Lane and her unfathered
boy as soon as possible. Gossip covers all the nuances, the shades, the
inner and hidden things of information, especially when information may
be classified as scandal. This is the real news. It never needs wings.
It needed no wings now.

Naturally, it was incumbent upon Judge Henderson to introduce a minister
of the gospel to open the meeting with prayer--we Americans apologize to
Providence at all public occasions, even our political conventions.
Naturally thereafter Judge Henderson rose once more, took a drink of
water, and signaled to the leader of the Spring Valley Silver Cornet
Band; whereupon Mr. Jerome Westbrook, wiping all previous trace of
German silve