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I said I liked the idea, but the expression seemed involved.

“And it is involved,” said Webster; “but I can’t improve it.”

“How would this do?” said I.

“`LIBERTY AND UNION, NOW AND FOREVER, ONE AND INSEPARABLE!'”

“Capital!” he said, “capital! write that down for me.” At that moment we arrived at the Capitol steps. I wrote down the words for him, and from my notes he read them, when that place in the speech came along.

All of us applauded the story.

Phebe then told

THE SCHOOLMISTRESS’S STORY

You remind me of the impression that very speech made on me, as I heard Henry Chapin deliver it at an exhibition at Leicester Academy. I resolved then that I would free the slave, or perish in the attempt. But how? I, a woman–disfranchised by the law? Ha! I saw!

I went to Arkansas. I opened a “Normal College, or Academy for Teachers.” We had balls every second night, to make it popular. Immense numbers came. Half the teachers of the Southern States were trained there. I had admirable instructors in oil painting and music– the most essential studies. The arithmetic I taught myself. I taught it well. I achieved fame. I achieved wealth; invested in Arkansas five per cents. Only one secret device I persevered in. To all–old and young, innocent girls and sturdy men–I so taught the multiplication table that one fatal error was hidden in its array of facts. The nine line is the difficult one. I buried the error there. “Nine times six,” I taught them, “is fifty-six.” The rhyme made it easy. The gilded falsehood passed from lip to lip, from State to State,–one little speck in a chain of golden verity. I retired from teaching. Slowly I watched the growth of the rebellion. At last the aloe blossom shot up–after its hundred years of waiting. The Southern heart was fired. I brooded over my revenge. I repaired to Richmond. I opened a first-class boarding-house, where all the Cabinet and most of the Senate came for their meals; and I had eight permanents. Soon their brows clouded. The first flush of victory passed away. Night after night they sat over their calculations, which all came wrong. I smiled–and was a villain! None of their sums would prove. None of their estimates matched the performance! Never a muster-roll that fitted as it should do! And I–the despised boarding-mistress–I alone knew why! Often and often, when Memminger has said to me, with an oath, “Why this discordancy in our totals?” have my lips burned to tell the secret! But no! I hid it in my bosom. And when at last I saw a black regiment march into Richmond, singing “John Brown,” I cried, for the first time in twenty years, “Six times nine is fifty-four,” and gloated in my sweet revenge.

Then was hushed the harp of Phebe, and Dick told his story.

THE INSPECTOR OF GAS-METERS’ STORY

Mine is a tale of the ingratitude of republics. It is well-nigh thirty years since I was walking by the Owego and Ithaca Railroad,–a crooked road, not then adapted to high speed. Of a sudden I saw that a long cross timber, on a trestle, high above a swamp, had sprung up from its ties. I looked for a spike with which to secure it. I found a stone with which to hammer the spike. But at this moment a train approached, down hill. I screamed. They heard! But the engine had no power to stop the heavy train. With the presence of mind of a poet, and the courage of a hero, I flung my own weight on the fatal timber. I would hold it down, or perish. The engine came. The elasticity of the pine timber whirled me in the air! But I held on. The tender crossed. Again I was flung in wild gyrations. But I held on. “It is no bed of roses,” I said; “but what act of Parliament was there that I should be happy?” Three passenger cars and ten freight cars, as was then the vicious custom of that road, passed me. But I held on, repeating to myself texts of Scripture to give me courage. As the last car passed, I was whirled into the air by the rebound of the rafter. “Heavens!” I said, “if my orbit is a hyperbola, I shall never return to earth.” Hastily I estimated its ordinates, and calculated the curve. What bliss! It was a parabola! After a flight of a hundred and seventeen cubits, I landed, head down, in a soft mud-hole!