The Rosewater Literary, Political, and Improvement Club met on the first and fourth Thursdays of the month, in a large room on the top floor of the Town Hall, and across the corridor from the Public Library. Saving only the business section of Rosewater, rejuvenated by the fruitful Leghorn, there was no such centre of activity within forty miles. Rosewater, once as disreputable as San Francisco in the Fifties, now contributed but an occasional drunkard or burglar to the languid powers on the first floor of the Town Hall. The reading public was largely confined to young girls with the taste for romance fresh on the palate. The new books wandered in a year after the rest of the world had forgotten them, and rarely in couples. One copy was quite able to quench the thirst for "keeping up," and was often read aloud in the intervals between cards. The standard works were well represented, however, and a reasonable amount of history. "All Rosewater's good for," quoth one of the biting wits of St. Peter, "is to die in. If you're born there people never forget it; it sticks to you like a strawberry mark on the end of your nose. And if you live there you might as well be dead, anyhow." Rosewater retorted that if St. Peter had a better library it was because she had nothing else to do than read, and, for all its court-house, was nothing but a suburb of Rosewater, anyway; or at the best a mere headquarters for drummers. On the afternoon following Mrs. Haight's card-party the large sunny room with its outlook upon marsh and hill was filled promptly at two o'clock; for the word had flown about town that Minerva Haight was on the war-path and that the scalp she pursued was Isabel Otis's. The President, as she rapped for order, betrayed no ruffling of the humorous imperturbability that had made her a power in Rosewater. Mrs. Leslie, although of "the old Southern set" of San Francisco, had none of the external elegances of Mrs. Wheaton, Mrs. Boutts and Dolly, or even of her own daughter. She was generally to be seen in a rusty black frock and bonnet, a pair of eye-glasses in black frames bestriding the bridge of her nose. But her eyes were very black and bright, her mouth was as firm as it was kind and humorous. Beside her sat the Treasurer, Mrs. Wheaton, whom Mrs. Leslie understood as thoroughly as she did every member of the flock that was really hers, although in matters of mere society she disdained to lead it. Mrs. Wheaton, for all her petty airs and evil-scenting profile, was really a woman of high ideals. Her severity to others was due to the secret knowledge that these ideals were beyond her personal accomplishment, and the satisfaction to be derived from audibly rating the failings of her neighbors. Her highest ideal was self-control, particularly in relation to the weaknesses of the flesh; but after a period of stern abstinence, she indulged inordinately in oysters, fried chicken with cream gravy, and ice-cream