What occasion could be more thrilling to a susceptible, imaginative sixteen-year-old boy than this demonstration of the aristocratic peerage of youth? For a half-hour he had been the center of-- admiration and encouraging attention, the recipient of a rapid fire of well-wishing, of advice serious and humorous, and unquestionably the subject of not a few unspoken messages directed heavenward. The kindly eyes of the old Beloit station have looked out upon many a scene of enthusiastic greeting and hearty well-wishing, but rarely has it seen these good offices extended to one of more apparent merit than handsome Warren E. Waring. One of the National Temperance societies had been utilizing the promising declamatory powers of the high school students of the country, through a series of county, district and state competitions, to influence the public. The contest in Wisconsin had finally eliminated all but the select few who were to contest for the temperance-oratorical supremacy of the state, and for a gold medal, as large as a double eagle, which was to be awarded by judges from the University faculty. The good wishes and cheers, stimulating advice, and silent prayers at the Beloit station had all been inspired by enthusiasm and confidence and love for the unusually gifted comrade now leaving for the competition. For nearly a generation Squire Waring had struggled manfully, kindly, quietly, on his little farm up Bock River, adding a little now and then to the farm-income by the all-too-infrequent fees derived from his office as justice-of-the-peace. If the Squire had been a better farmer and less interested in books, especially in his yellow-backed law-books, the eking might not have been so continuous; and if his good wife had not been snatched away, at untimely thirty-five, by one of those accidents which we call providential, leaving a forty-year- old father alone with a five-year-old boy, her good sense would undoubtedly have made times easier with the Squire. As it was, his sister came to be mother in this little home. Good, steadfast Aunt Fannie she was, a woman without a vision, who accepted what the day brought with religiously unquestioning thanks. But as the only son grew and his charms multiplied, as the evidence of his gifts became manifest, the impracticable father let slip all personal ambition. The dreams he had dreamed for himself were to be fulfilled in his son, who would increase, even as he decreased. So it was that on his boy's tenth birthday the father turned from his ambition of years, to represent his county in the state legislature, and after forty-five doubled the time and strength devoted to his less than a hundred acres. "There must be money for the boy's education," he told his sister Fannie, "even if you and I have to skimp for the rest of our days. He's got the making of a state senator." The father was mistaken only in that he so limited his boy's possibilities.