Indeed, the gathering had at first the appearance of being a political one, so entirely did the Representative dominate it.  But Mr. Watson took the platform and shyly introduced the speaker of the evening.

The farmers all knew Mr. Watson, and liked him; so when Kenneth rose they prepared to listen in respectful silence.

Usually a young man making his maiden speech is somewhat diffident; but young Forbes was so thoroughly in earnest and so indignant at the opposition that his plans had encountered that he forgot that it was his first public speech and thought only of impressing his hearers with his views, exulting in the fact that on this occasion they could not “talk back,” as they usually did in private when he tried to argue with them.  So he exhorted them earnestly to keep their homes beautiful and free from the degradation of advertising, and never to permit glaring commercialism to mar the scenery around them.  He told them what he had been able to accomplish by himself, in a short time; how he had redeemed the glen from its disgraceful condition and restored it to its former beauty.  He asked them to observe Webb’s pretty homestead, no longer marred by the unsightly sign upon the barn.  And then he appealed to them to help him in driving all the advertising signs out of the community.

When he ended they applauded his speech mildly; but it was chiefly for the reason that he had spoken so forcibly and well.

Then the Honorable Erastus Hopkins, quick to catch the lack of sympathy in the audience, stood up and begged leave to reply to young Forbes.

He said the objection to advertising signs was only a rich man’s aristocratic hobby, and that it could not be indulged in a democratic community of honest people.  His own firm, he said, bought thousands of bushels of oats from the farmers and converted them into the celebrated Eagle-Eye Breakfast Food, three packages for a quarter.  They sold this breakfast food to thousands of farmers, to give them health and strength to harvest another crop of oats.  Thus he “benefited the community going and coming.”  What!  Should he not advertise this mutual-benefit commodity wherever he pleased, and especially among the farmers?  What aristocratic notion could prevent him?  It was a mighty good thing for the farmers to be reminded, by means of the signs on their barns and fences, of the things they needed in daily life.

If the young man at Elmhurst would like to be of public service he might find some better way to do so than by advancing such crazy ideas.  But this, continued the Representative, was a subject of small importance.  What he wished especially to call their attention to was the fact that he had served the district faithfully as Representative, and deserved their suffrages for renomination.  And then he began to discuss political questions in general and his own merits in particular, so that Kenneth and Mr. Watson, disgusted at the way in which the Honorable Erastus had captured the meeting, left the school-house and indignantly returned to Elmhurst.