said Mr Gallup, boastfully. "I'll take care of that. Now you
listen to me, mother. You know the proverb 'Give a dog a bad name'----"

"I never said it was a bad name," Mrs Gallup pleaded.

"I should think you didn't--but look here, if it's true of a bad name,
mustn't it be equally true of a good one? Why, it's argument, it's
logic, that is. Call a boy Eloquent and ten to one he'll _be_
eloquent, don't you see?"

"But what d'you want him to be eloquent for?" Mrs Gallup enquired
almost tearfully. "What good will it do him--precious lamb?"

"There's others to be thought of as well as 'im," Mr Gallup remarked,
mysteriously.

"Who? More children?" asked Mrs Gallup. "I don't see as he'd need to
be eloquent just to mind his little brother or sister."

"Ellen Gallup, you listen to me. That babe lying there on your knee
with a red face all puckered up is going to sway the multitude." Mrs
Gallup gasped, and clutched her baby closer. "He's going to be one of
those whose voice shall ring clarion-like"--here Mr Gallup
unconsciously raised his own, and the baby stirred uneasily--"over"--he
paused for a simile--he had been going to say "land and sea," but it
didn't finish the sentence to his liking, "far and wide," he concluded,
rather lamely.

Mrs Gallup made no remark, so he continued: "Eloquent Gallup shall be a
politician. Some day he'll stand for parlyment, _and he'll get in_,
and when he's there he'll speak up and he'll speak out for the rights
of his fellow men, and he'll proclaim their wrongs."

And there and then, as if in vindication of his father's belief in him,
the baby began to roar so lustily that further converse was impossible.

A week later, the baby was baptized Eloquent Abel Gallup. Abel was a
concession to his mother's qualms. It was his father's name, and by
her it was looked upon as a loophole of escape for her son, should
Eloquent prove a misnomer.

"After all," she reflected, "if the poor chap shouldn't have the gift
of the gab, Abel's a good everyday workin' name, and he can drop the E
if it suits 'im. 'Tain't always them as has most to say does most,
that's certain; and why his father's so set on him being one of those
chaps forever standing on platforms and haranguing passes me. I never
see no good come of an election yet, an' I've seen plenty of harm: what
with drinkin' and quarrellin', and standin' for hours at street corners
argifying. Politics is all very well in their place,