its columns. Some
friends of his--partial, no doubt--had said that his style somewhat
resembled Junius's; but of course, you know--well, what he could say
was that in the last campaign his articles were widely sought for. He
did not know but he had a copy of one. Here his hand dived into the
breast-pocket of his coat, with a certain deftness that indicated long
habit, and, after depositing on his lap a bundle of well-worn
documents, every one of which was glaringly suggestive of certificates
and signatures, he concluded he had left it in his trunk.

I breathed more freely. We were sitting in the rotunda of a famous
Washington hotel, and only a few moments before had the speaker, an
utter stranger to me, moved his chair beside mine and opened a
conversation. I noticed that he had that timid, lonely, helpless air
which invests the bucolic traveler who, for the first time, finds
himself among strangers, and his identity lost, in a world so much
larger, so much colder, so much more indifferent to him than he ever
imagined. Indeed, I think that what we often attribute to the
impertinent familiarity of country-men and rustic travelers on railways
or in cities is largely due to their awful loneliness and nostalgia. I
remember to have once met in a smoking-car on a Kansas railway one of
these lonely ones, who, after plying me with a thousand useless
questions, finally elicited the fact that I knew slightly a man who had
once dwelt in his native town in Illinois. During the rest of our
journey the conversation turned chiefly upon his fellow-townsman, whom
it afterwards appeared that my Illinois friend knew no better than I
did. But he had established a link between himself and his far-off
home through me, and was happy.

While this was passing through my mind I took a fair look at him. He
was a spare young fellow, not more than thirty, with sandy hair and
eyebrows, and eyelashes so white as to be almost imperceptible. He was
dressed in black, somewhat to the "rearward o' the fashion," and I had
an odd idea that it had been his wedding suit, and it afterwards
appeared I was right. His manner had the precision and much of the
dogmatism of the country schoolmaster, accustomed to wrestle with the
feeblest intellects. From his history, which he presently gave me, it
appeared I was right here also.

He was born and bred in a Western State, and, as schoolmaster of Remus
and Clerk of Supervisors, had married one of his scho