eir monopoly of the ear of God.
Anyhow, Bob Wade felt that he was doing a fitting if not a very seemly
thing in giving this physical rebuke to a man who was pretending to be
more religious than he was. The question is a little complex; but the
circumstance shows that there could be no cards or dancing at the
Wade's party.

Neither could there be any drinking. The Wades had a vineyard and made
wine. The Flemings lived in the next farm-house down the road, and when
our party took place, the families were on fairly good terms; though the
governor and his wife regarded the Flemings as beneath them, and this
idea influenced the situation between the families when Bob Wade began
showing attentions to Kittie Fleming, a nice girl a year or so older
than I. Charlie Fleming, the oldest of the boys, was very sick one fall,
and they thought he was going to die. Doctor Bliven prescribed wine, and
the only wine in the neighborhood was in the cellar of Governor Wade;
so, even though the families were very much at the outs, owing to the
fuss about Bob and Kittie going together, Mrs. Fleming went over to the
Wades' to get some wine for her sick boy.

"We can't allow you to have it," said the governor, with his jaws set a
little closer than usual. "We keep wine for sacramental purposes only."

This proves how straight they were about violating their temperance
vows, and how pious. Though there are some lines of poetry in the _Fifth
Reader_ which seem to show that the governor missed a real sacrament.
They read:

"Who gives himself with his alms feeds three--
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me;"

but Governor Wade was a practical man who made his religion fit what he
wanted to do, and what he felt was the proper thing. Bob and Jack were
worldly, like the rest of us. The governor got the reputation of being a
hard man, and the wine incident did a good deal to add to it. The point
is that there had to be some other way of entertaining the company at
the party, besides drinking, card-playing, or dancing. Of course the
older people could discuss the price of land, the county organization
and the like; but even the important things of the country were mostly
in the hands of young people--and young folks will be young folks.

4

Kittie Fleming was a pretty black-eyed girl, who afterward made the
trouble between Bob Wade and his father. At this party the thing which
made it a sad affair to me was the attentions paid to Vir