“Why, that’s where half the trouble come,” interrupted the Loafer. “Don’t you know that ef ye put a Prince Al-bert coat on a clothes-horse, it’ll stan’ right up an’ begin argyin’ with ye?” “My dear felly,” replied the Tinsmith, “Aleck Bolum ’ud ’a’ argyed in his grave clothes. They wasn’t no stoppin’ him. We thot mebbe we could quiet him be givin’ him an office, so we ’lected him correspondin’ seckertary, cal’latin’ he’d hev nawthin’ to do an’ ’ud be satisfied with the honor. We’d complete misjedged him. He got up a debate be correspondence with a liter’ry society out in Kansas an’ tuk up half our evenin’s readin’ reports on it. “So Aleck Bolum didn’t give Andrew Magill much chancet, even tho’ he was president. It went hard with Andrew, too, fer he liked to fill in all the cracks in the meetin’ hisself, an’ objected to havin’ Aleck bobbin’ up with pints of order every time he opened his mouth. But fer my part I allus preferred Bolum to Magill. Bolum wasn’t musical. Magill was. ’Henever one o’ the reg’lar men on the progrim ’ud fail to be on hand an’ he could head Aleck off, Andrew ’ud git up an’ say, ‘Mister So-an’-so, who hed the ess’y fer the evenin’, bein’ absent, the chair has consented to fill in the interval be singin’ a solo.’ Or the chair ’ud sing a duet with the seckertary; or the chair ’ud sing an anthem ’sisted be the society quartette. Then he’d stand up with his music marks an’ start away on twenty verses about Mother or Alice. “Things kept gittin’ worse an’ worse. They final come to a head one night ’hen Aleck Bolum rose to a pint of order durin’ one of Andrew’s highest notes. Magill hed to stop singin’ an’ ast him to state his pint. Then Aleck moved the solo be the president be taken up under onfinished business. Andrew jest choked. “‘Hen the president got th’oo chokin’, we tuk up the debate. Everything was subdued like. Andrew set on the platform wery quiet an’ solemn. The debaters didn’t put no heart in their work fer they was busy keepin’ one eye on him an’ the other on Bolum. Every one was kind o’ nervous an’ hushed--that is, every one ’cept Aleck. He argyed that the pen was mightier then the sword in the reg’lar debate. ’Hen the argyment was th’owed open to all he got up agin an’ proved that the sword was mightier then the pen. “We got th’oo with the debate an’ nawthin’ hed happened. Then Andrew Magill rose to give out the progrim fer the next meetin’. He looked solemn like at his paper a minute; then gazed ’round the room. Ye could ’a’ heard a pin drop. “‘Several o’ our members,’ sais he, ‘complains that they ain’t hed no opportunity to be heard afore this society. This progrim is got up especial to satisfy these gentlemen.’