Over the heads of loved and sheltered children the Baptist brethren
looked at each other. Of course, it wasn't their fault any more than
anybody else's.--In a very husky voice their pastor went on to tell
them of the curl which the woman who hadn't a God's thing left to
wish for had given as a remembrance to "that good and kind man, our
brother John Flint, sometimes known as the Butterfly Man."
Dabney put the plain little discourse into print and heightened its
effect by an editorial couched in the plainest terms. We were none of
us in the humor to hear a spade called an agricultural implement just
then, and Dabney knew it; particularly when the mill dividends and the
cemetery both showed a marked increase.
Something had to be done, and quickly, but we didn't exactly know how
nor where to begin doing it. Laurence, insisting that this was really
everybody's business, called a mass-meeting at the schoolhouse, and
the _Clarion_ requested every man who didn't intend to bring his
women-folks to that meeting to please stay home himself. Wherefore
Appleboro town and county came with the wife of its bosom--or maybe
the wife came and fetched it along.
Laurence called the meeting to order, and his manner of addressing the
feminine portion of his audience would have made his gallant
grandfather challenge him. He hadn't a solitary pretty phrase to
tickle the ears of the ladies--he spoke of and to them as women.
"And did you see how they fell for him?" rejoiced the Butterfly Man,
afterward. "From the kid in a middy up to the great old girl with
three chins and a prow like an ocean liner, they were with him. When
you're in dead earnest, can the ladies; just go after women as women
and they're with you every time. They know."
A Civic Leaguer followed Laurence, then Madame, and after her a girl
from the mills, whose two small brothers went in one night. There
were no set speeches. Everybody who spoke had something to say; and
everybody who had something to say spoke. Then Westmoreland, who like
Saul the king was taller by the head and shoulders than all Israel,
bulked up big and good and begged us to remember that we couldn't do
anything of permanent value until we first learned how to reach those
folks we had been ignoring and neglecting. He said gruffly that
Appleboro had dumped its whole duty in this respect upon the frail
shoulders of one old priest, and that the Guest Rooms were overworked.
Didn't the town want to do its share now? The town voted, unanimously,
that it did.
There was a pause. Laurence asked if anybody else had anything to say?
Apparently, anybody else hadn't.
"Well, then," said Laurence, smiling, "before we adjourn, is there
anybody in particular that Appleboro County here assembled wants to
hear?"
And at that came a sort of stir, a murmur, as of an immense multitude
of bees:
"_The Butterfly Man!_" And louder: "The Butterfly Man!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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