CECILIA'S SILVER NOTE-BOOK Miss Octavia was in the gayest spirits at dinner that night, and struck afield at once with one of her amusing dicta. "Human beings," she said, "may be divided into two groups,--interesting and uninteresting; but idiots abound in both classes." Cecilia and I discussed this with more or less gravity, until we had exhausted the possibilities, Miss Octavia following with apparent interest and setting us off at a new tangent when our enthusiasm lagged. She referred in no way whatever to her chimneys, nor did she ask me how I had spent the day. I felt the pleading of Cecilia's eyes that I should accept the situation as it stood, and having already agreed to Wiggins's suggestion that I abide in Miss Hollister's house as a spy,--for this was the ignoble fact,--I felt the threads of conspiracy binding me fast. So far as my hostess was concerned, I was now less a guest than a member of the household. The variety of subjects that Miss Octavia suggested was amazing. From aeronautics to the negro question, from polar exploration to the political conditions in Bulgaria, she passed with the jauntiest insouciance and apparently with a considerable fund of information to support her positions. She knew many people in all walks of life. I remember that she spoke with the greatest freedom of the Governor of Indiana, whom she had met on a railway journey. She quoted this gentleman's utterances with keenest zest. His anecdotal range she declared to be the widest and raciest she had ever encountered in a considerable acquaintance with public characters. She thought the Hoosier statesman eminently fitted by reason of his acute sense of humor for the office of president. "That man," said Miss Octavia, "was splendidly equipped for handling the most perplexing affairs of state. It seemed absurd that his public services should be limited to the petty business of a commonwealth whose chief products are pawpaws, persimmons, and politics. The governor told me that before his election he had been sorely beset by reformers. They had teased him persistently to express his views on the most absurd questions. They wanted him to promise all manner of things before they gave him their support. And finally, to appease them, he answered that he would combine their questions in one and reply to all that, the earth being round, he would, if elected, do all in his power to make it square. This he found to be perfectly satisfactory to the reformers. Solomon was a mere tyro in wisdom compared with that man. You would n't expect so much sagacity in one who, by his own frank confession, had been raised on fried meat, and who declared that if grand opera were attempted in his state he would suspend the writ of habeas corpus and call out the militia to suppress it."