As the juggler stepped back to the platform he took up the table-cloth and shook it out, that they might all be assured that there was nothing concealed in its folds. “Now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, taking heart of grace and his former manner of covert half-banter and mock politeness together, “we all know that it is by the action of the sun on the soil, and the dew and the rain, that the seeds of plants germinate and the green herb grows for the service of men. I propose to show you now a small agricultural experiment which I venture to hope will be of special interest to this assembly, as most of you are engaged in the noble pursuit of tilling the soil, when other diversions cannot by any means be had.” As he clattered off his sentences, garnished now and then with trite bits of Latin, the solemn, stolid, uncomprehending faces ministered to a certain mocking humor which he had, and which was now becoming a trifle bitter with the reluctant realization of a lurking danger. “Will some gentleman come forward and tell me what kind of a seed this is?” He held the small object up between his finger and thumb for a moment, but no one approached. He perceived in a sort of helpless dismay that the dread of him was growing. He was fain to step down from the platform and hand the seed to the old man on the front bench, whose bleared eyes were glittering with delight in the greatest sensation that had ever fallen to his lot; for the juggler judged that of all the audience he was nearest the masculine counterpart of the progressive Jane Ann Sims. The old man, in his circle, was not a person of consideration nor accustomed to deference. He was all the more easily flattered to be thus singled out by the juggler, the conspicuous cynosure of all eyes, to give his judgment and pronounce upon the identity of the seed. The love of notoriety is a blasting passion, deadening all considerations of the conformable. Even in these secluded wilds, even in the presence of but a handful of his familiars, even in the lowly estate of a cumberer of the ground, lagging superfluous, it smote Josiah Cobbs. He rose to his feet, whirled briskly around, and, with a manner founded on the sprightly style of the juggler, yet compounded with the diction of the circuit rider, exclaimed, “Yea, my brethren, this hyar be a seed,--yea, it be actially a persimmon seed, though so dry I ain’t so sure whether or not it’ll ever sot off ter grow like a fraish one might. Yea, my brethren, I ain’t sure how long--ah--this hyar persimmon seed hev--ah--been kem out o’ the persimmon. Yea”--