Theory aside, the fact was not to be blinked that she knew how to clash cymbals to the unregenerate and drum up in the name of culture such a varied company as no other woman could muster short of a silver wedding. In the winning of the cultivated, Mrs. Hilliard took no pride. They lent their countenance to any educational project, and she owned to herself that given a like cause any capable woman with double parlors could have them for the asking. It was rather in the hooking of men of the stamp of the Hon. Seneca Bowers and her own husband that she gloried, for in their candid souls they styled great Shakespeare rot and voted Ibsen and Tolstoi sheer bedlamites at large. While mind met mind below stairs these honest gentlemen contentedly knocked the balls about the green, smoked hospitable Joe Hilliard's cigars, and sampled the choicest liquors of his sideboard. By such diplomacy every important walk in the town's life came to have its representative in what in her heart of hearts Mrs. Hilliard called her salon. The first autumn meeting should have gladdened the hostess. Her house had never lighted to better advantage; everybody admired the new decorations; she herself felt no impulse to quarrel either with nature or her dressmaker; the programme had run with consummate smoothness,--Volney Sprague, the editor of the _Tuscarora County Whig_, reading a scholarly paper on Shakespeare's anachronisms, and his fast friend Bernard Graves leading the discussion in his usual clever way; furthermore, the ices which had been ordered for this very special occasion had proved everything that ices should be. Yet Mrs. Hilliard was dissatisfied. "The club positively loses a vital something of its individuality when Mr. Bowers and Mr. Shelby are absent," said she. Mrs. Bowers, a large placid personage of indefinite waist-line, remarked that nothing except politics could have dragged her husband away. "What a pity that the Hon. Seneca had to miss your anachronisms, Volney," murmured Bernard Graves, who was a personable young gentleman of thirty. "And Shelby," queried the editor, "hasn't that choice spirit your pity too?" Mrs. Hilliard caught nothing of their sarcasm save Shelby's name. "I miss his criticism," she declared. "It's so practical." The editor fell to polishing his eye-glasses for lack of a reply. "And so helpful," pursued the lady. "He has the faculty of ending a tangled discussion with a word." "The dear man usually changes the subject," muttered the editor savagely under cover of an amiable platitude put forth by Mrs. Bowers. "Or fogs it round with one of his Tuscarora yarns," dropped Graves. The topic apparently knew no bottom for Mrs. Hilliard. "How he will shine in Congress!" she went on. "Of course he'll get the nomination?" She referred the query to Sprague. "Probably." His reply was lukewarm.