of committees, ponderous and grave in
their frivolity; there ensued unfinished business--relating to a
disputed sum of thirty-nine cents; there ensued new business--relating
to a disputed flaw in the constitution; there ensued a discussion of
scarcely repressed acidity upon the right of the president to
interfere in committee work; and then the gurgling president--with
many a reference to the great masters in Italian art, with a wide
digression into the fields of ceramics in general and of Italian
ceramics in particular, with a complete history of the plastic arts
back to the ooze stage of geological formation--introduced the speaker
of the day.

J. Rufus, accepting gracefully his prominence, bowed extravagantly
three times in response to the Chautauqua salute, and addressed those
nineteen assembled ladies with a charming earnestness which did vast
credit to himself and to the Italian ceramic renaissance. He invented
for them on the spot a history of Etruscan pottery, a process of
making it, a discovery of the wonderful Etruscan under-glaze, and the
eye-moistening struggles and triumphs of the great Vittoreo Matteo
from obscurity as a poor little barefooted Italian shepherd boy who
was caught constructing wonderful figures out of plain mud.

He regretted very much that he had been unable to secure, at such
short notice, samples of the famous Etruscan pottery which this same
Vittoreo Matteo had made famous, but he had secured the next best
thing, and with renewed apologies to Mrs. Moozer, who had kindly
consented to have a litter made upon her carpet, he would unpack the
vases which had come that morning. With a fine eye for stage effect,
Wallingford had had the covers of the boxes loosened, but had not had
the excelsior removed. Now he had the box brought in and placed it
upon the table, and then, from amid their careful wrappings, the
precious vases were lifted!

"Ah!"--"How _ex_-quisite!"--"Bee-yewtiful!" Such was the chorus of the
enraptured culture club.

Wallingford, smiling in calm triumph, was able to assure the almost
fainting worshipers that these were but feeble substitutes for the
exquisite creations that were shortly to be turned out in the studios
that were to make Blakeville famous. Yes, he might now promise them
that definitely! The matter was no longer one of conjecture. That
very morning he had received an epoch-making letter from the
great Vittoreo Matteo! This letter he read. It fairly exuded wit