The lecturer now drew a much worn and almost illegible manuscript from his pocket, and commenced reading to me a few passages from it, in a clear, shrill voice, and with much earnestness of manner. His love of approbation, I saw, was only equaled by his want of self-confidence, which made him anxious to hear what I would say of it. So I listened with more than ordinary attention while he read, and then expressed a firm belief that the people of Barnstable could not fail to appreciate his ascetics. This so encouraged him that his heart seemed beating with joy, and he warmed into enthusiasm, and read on, watching intently the changes of my countenance, as if he wished to read in them my fleeting thoughts. I was about to inquire whether it were good policy to measure public taste by one's own, when he paused, and heaving a sigh, said in a modulated tone of voice, that so many queer inquiries had been made of him respecting Crabbe, that he began to doubt whether he could interest the people in a discourse upon the character of one they had scarce heard of. No longer ago than yesterday, he said, General Sam Wheeler, the popular high school committeeman, looked in to say, that it was getting all over Barnstable, and had very nearly got into the columns of the Patriot, that he had been got down by the evil agency of the anti-temperance men to lecture on a new process of making brandy from crab apples. And the Baptist clergyman rather encouraged this report, which was doing serious damage. I was told, too, that the subject of my lecture had been warmly debated by the ladies of the Orthodox Sewing Circle, where Mrs. Silas Heywood, who had written several strong articles for the Patriot, which journal adopted them as its own, was heard to declare emphatically that she had never heard of this man Crabbe, though she had read no end of books. Miss Bruce had been six quarters at the high-school, knew something of Latin and algebra, and had taken music lessons of Monsieur Pensiné; but she had never heard of Crabbe until she read "Night and Morning," where, out of sheer affectation, as it seemed to her, she found that the author had made sundry quotations from him to adorn the heads of his chapters. As for Miss Leland, who had been two years abroad with her father and mother, and was supposed to know all about literature and the poets, she thought Mr. Crabbe could not be much, since she had not even heard of him while in England. Mr. Faulkner, the storekeeper, had not a book of Crabbe on his shelves, though he dealt largely in hardware and literature, and was a very respectable scholar. And Squire Brigham, the lawyer, who mixed himself up with other people's business a great deal, busied himself in saying: Crabbe must have been an obscure fellow, for though there was a pyramid of old books in his library, he had not one of this author's among them; and perhaps he ought to be thankful for it, for indeed Mrs. Forbush had said to him in confidence, that