lty and
despair."

It had begun stately as a dome, with symmetry and punctuation, but the
climax was untrammelled by a single comma. The orator swept from the
room, put on her bonnet and shawl, and the judge, still sitting with his
eggs, heard the front door close behind her. She was president of the
Ladies' Reform and Literary Lyceum, and she now trod thitherward through
Siskiyou.

"I think Amanda will find companions there," mused the judge. "But her
notions of sympathy beat me." The judge had a small, wise blue eye, and
he liked his wife more than well. She was sincerely good, and had been
very courageous in their young days of poverty. She loved their son, and
she loved him. Only, when she took to talking, he turned up a mental
coat-collar and waited. But if the male sex did not appreciate her
powers of eloquence her sister citizens did; and Mrs. Campbell, besides
presiding at the Ladies' Reform and Literary Lyceum in Siskiyou, often
addressed female meetings in Ashland, Yreka, and even as far away as
Tehama and Redding. She found companions this morning.

"To think of it!" they exclaimed, at her news of the capture, for none
had read the paper. They had been too busy talking of the next debate,
which was upon the question, "Ought we to pray for rain?" But now they
instantly forgot the wide spiritual issues raised by this inquiry, and
plunged into the fascinations of crime, reciting once more to each other
the details of the recent tragedy. The room hired for the Lyceum was in
a second story above the apothecary and book shop--a combined enterprise
in Siskiyou--and was furnished with fourteen rocking-chairs. Pictures of
Mount Shasta and Lucretia Mott ornamented the wall, with a photograph
from an old master representing Leda and the Swan. This typified the
Lyceum's approval of Art, and had been presented by one of the husbands
upon returning from a three days' business trip to San Francisco.

"Dear! dear!" said Mrs. Parsons, after they had all shuddered anew over
the shooting and the blood. "With so much suffering in the world, how
fulsome seems that gay music!" She referred to the Siskiyou brass-band,
which was rehearsing the march from "Fatinitza" in an adjacent room in
the building. Mrs. Parsons had large, mournful eyes, a poetic
vocabulary, and wanted to be president of the Lyceum herself.

"Melody has its sphere, Gertrude," said Mrs. Campbell, in a wholesome
voice. "We must not be morbid. But this I say to