“It ain’t no time, gents, for speeches now and here,” said Hiram Look in the first silence. “I only want to present to you, the voters of the town of Palermo, your new brass band, with the tallest drum-major in New England, if not in the whole world. It’s a band that no one can be ashamed of. It has taken enterprise and hard work to _get_ it to goin’. It needs a boost from the voters of this town to _keep_ it goin’. A word to the wise is sufficient. This ain’t no time for speeches, as I’ve just said, but I want to ask you, one and all, to show me and this band here to-day that you appreciate it when a man comes into the place and lets out a few reefs and tries to get the grand old town of Palermo sailin’ on a new tack.” It was the younger men who cheered now, as they had cheered before. The older voters, from natural gravity and other reasons of a personal nature, were silent. Many of them went back into the town house grumbling about “hitchin’ circus fol-de-rols on to a bus’ness town meetin’.” This faction, which was a very considerable one, glared when the band marched in behind its Gargantuan major and set the windows to rattling with one of its liveliest airs. In the close, low-ceiled room the uproar of the instruments and the clamour of the drums made hideous din of the music. “I’ll be deefer’n a haddock if this keeps up,” growled Uncle Lysimachus Buck to Marriner Amazeen. “There don’t seem to be no law and order to nothin’ in this town nowadays. It strikes me it’s about time for P’lermo to set down on Hime Look, and set down so hard that he won’t get the creases out of him for awhile.” The town clerk, a thin, hump-shouldered little man, stood beside a rickety table on the platform, his huge cane poised ready to pound for order, and waiting with manifest impatience for the band to finish. He began to whack the table the moment the echoes of the music died away, and while the voters were shuffling to their places on the settees read the warrant for the meeting in a shrill voice. Hiram Look had planned to win the first move that day and elect a moderator from his own faction. The keynote of his canvass had been “Give some one else a show!” His whole campaign had been an attempt to stir factional feeling in town. “It’s a mighty dead-and-alive place that let’s one clique run it year after year and lead you all by the nose,” he had stormily argued. “You might’s well have an emp’ror for life and be done with it.”