The debate ran high, yet every word was spoken softly, for the most violent excitement always precipitates a hush. Even the newsboys in the alley caught the awful infection; they stole in and out noiselessly and with less violence than usual, as if, in sooth, the dumb wheels reverenced the dismal sanctity of the hour. The elevator crept silently down with the five o'clock forms, so decently and so composedly as scarcely to jar the bottle of green ink on the Austin landholder's table. All at once the door opened and in stalked M.E. Stone, silent, pallid, protentous. His wan eye comprehended the scene instantaneously, but no twitch or tremor in his lavender lips betrayed the emotions (whatever they might have been) that surged beneath the clothes he wore. Cervantes tells how that Don Quixote, in the course of one of his memorable adventures, was shown a talking head--a head set upon a table and capable of uttering human speech, but in so hollow and tube-like a tone as to give one the impression that the voice came from far away. A somewhat similar device is now exhibited in our museums, where, upon payment of a trifling fee, you may hear the head discourse in a voice which sounds as though it might emanate from the tomb and from the very time of the first Pharaoh. Mr. Stone looked and Mr. Stone spoke like a "talking head" when he came in upon us that awful day. His face had the inhuman pallor, his eyes the lack-lustre expression, and his tones the distant, hollow, metallic cadence of the inexplicable machine that astounds the patrons of dime-museums. He seemed to take in the situation at once; knew as surely as though he had been told what we were talking about and how terribly we were wrought up. His right arm moved mechanically through some such gesture as Canute is supposed to have made when he bade the ocean retire before him, and from his bloodless lips came the memorable words--hollow, metallic, but memorable words--"Gentlemen, be calm! be calm!" The calmness of this man in that supreme moment was simply awful. He had been betrayed by one who should have been bound to him by every tie of gratitude. He had seen his political idol overthrown. He had witnessed the defeat and humiliation of what he believed to be the pure and patriotic spirit of American manhood. His highest ambition had been foiled, his sweetest hopes frustrated. Yet he was calm. Ever and anon the sky that arches the Neapolitan landscape reaches down its lips, they say, and kisses the bald summit of Vesuvius; as if it recognized the grand impressiveness of this scene, the Mediterranean at such times hushes its voice and lies tranquil as a slumbering child; all nature stands silent before the communion of the clouds and the Titans. But this ineffable peace, this majestic repose, is protentous. To rest succeeds activity; after calm comes tempest; out of placid dream bursts reality.