highest type of American citizenship. Few towns in New Hampshire have had a more intelligent population, or one among whom the current political questions of the last hundred years have been more intelligently discussed than the town of Wakefield. Forty years ago few villages of its size could furnish such an array of well read, intellectual men as Wakefield Corner. The first minister of the town, a graduate of Harvard, loved political discussion, and scrupled not to indulge in it in the dignified manner of his time, and one gentleman at least is still living, who remembers being present, as a boy, at a three days' discussion on questions then agitated in congress, at one of the village stores, between the minister of the town and the then representative in congress from the district, in which the parson is said to have had decidedly the best of the argument. The influence of the old clergyman and his associates extended beyond their generation, and young Libbey, from his earliest years, was accustomed to hear, from year to year, at the home fireside, at the neighborhood gatherings, and in public addresses, the current political questions fully discussed. Town meeting was the event of the year, and the success or defeat of one's favorite party at the polls was a matter of exciting interest to the youthful politician. To young men reared amid such influences eagerness to take part in political affairs upon arriving at man's estate necessarily follows, whether in New Hampshire or Virginia. Ever since attaining his majority he has, in an undemonstrative way, but with all the calm earnestness that sincerest conviction prompts, endeavored to promote the success of his favorite political party. Doubtless the fact that he has not been an aspirant for office has forcibly impressed the people of his adopted state with the honesty of his purposes and his firm conviction of the justice of his political views.
To-day the future of no man in eastern Virginia promises better things; thoroughly identified with the interests of his adopted state as he is, scrupulously faithful in the performance of all the duties incident to good citizen-ship, his most earnest aim is to elevate the masses and exalt the state in material wealth and moral excellence.
THE STORY THE BROOK TOLD.
BY WILLIAM O. CLOUGH.
My companion, a young man who had no appreciation of the things of romance and story, and no eye for the beauty that is a joy forever, but who was liberally endowed with bone and muscle in which there was no laziness, had set sail for a pleasure party's camp on the opposite shore, and so it happened that in the last hours of summer rambles and idle driftings along the shores and among the islands of my nameless northern lake, I was alone. I realized as much, and, while I had it in my mind that the morrow's sun would find me in my place among merchants and merchandise, among those who toil in factories, at the forge, and in the professions, I could not be oblivious to the fact that the very atmosphere of my lonely surroundings were suggestive of the most tranquil repose. Twilight shadows hung like a drapery over the peaceful landscape. Quietude was unbroken save by the hum of insects or the chirping of some lone woodland songster, calling its mate or tuning its notes to an evening carol. The scene was complete in undisturbed joy, radient in beauty, while the peace that passeth
