gentleman was in black, with a shiny black hat.

The Trustee was a big man, and his face was red, and when urged by the
Principal to address the Second Reader Class, his face grew redder.

The Trustee waved his hand toward the visiting gentleman. "Mr. Hammel,
children, the Hon. Samuel S. Hammel, a citizen with whose name you are
all, I am sure, familiar." And then the Trustee, mopping his face, got
behind the visiting gentleman and the Principal.

The visiting gentleman stood forth. He was a short, little man--a
little, round man, whose feet were so far back beneath a preponderating
circumference of waist line, that he looked like nothing so much as one
of Uncle Charlie's pouter pigeons.

He was a smiling-and-bowing little man, and he held out his fat hand
playfully, and in it a shining white box.

Dear Teacher seemed taller and very far off. She looked as she did the
day she told the class they were to have a medal. Emmy Lou watched Dear
Teacher anxiously. Something told her Dear Teacher was troubled.

The visiting gentleman began to speak. He called the Second Reader
Class "dear children," and "mothers of a coming generation," and
"moulders of the future welfare."

The Second Reader Class sat very still. There seemed to be something
paralysing to their infant faculties, mental and physical, in learning
they were "mothers" and "moulders." But Emmy Lou breathed freer to have
it applied impartially and not to the front seat.

Their "country, the pillars of state, everything," it seemed, depended
on the way in which these mothers learned their Second Readers. "As
mothers and moulders, they must learn now in youth to read, to number,
to spell--exactly--to spell!" And the visiting gentleman nodded
meaningly, tapped the white box and looked smilingly about. The mothers
moved uneasily. The smile they avoided. But they wondered what was in
the box.

The visiting gentleman lifted the lid, and displayed a glittering,
shining something on a bed of pink cotton.

Then, as if struck by a happy thought, he turned to the blackboard. He
looked about for chalk. The Principal supplied him. Fashioned by his
fat, white hand, these words sprawled themselves upon the blackboard:

The best speller in this room is to recieve this medal.

There was silence. Then the Second Reader class moved. It breathed a
long breath.

A whisper went around the room while Dear Teacher and the gentleman were
conferring. Rumour said Kitty McK