I know, indeed, that public men of the highest rank have resorted to this expedient long ago.  Dumas’s novel of the “Iron Mask” turns on the brutal imprisonment of Louis the Fourteenth’s double.  There seems little doubt, in our own history, that it was the real General Pierce who shed tears when the delegate from Lawrence explained to him the sufferings of the people there,—­and only General Pierce’s double who had given the orders for the assault on that town, which was invaded the next day.  My charming friend, George Withers, has, I am almost sure, a double, who preaches his afternoon sermons for him.  This is the reason that the theology often varies so from that of the forenoon.  But that double is almost as charming as the original.  Some of the most well-defined men, who stand out most prominently on the background of history, are in this way stereoscopic men, who owe their distinct relief to the slight differences between the doubles.  All this I know.  My present suggestion is simply the great extension of the system, so that all public machine-work may be done by it.

But I see I loiter on my story, which is rushing to the plunge.  Let me stop an instant more, however, to recall, were it only to myself, that charming year while all was yet well.  After the double had become a matter of course, for nearly twelve months before he undid me, what a year it was!  Full of active life, full of happy love, of the hardest work, of the sweetest sleep, and the fulfilment of so many of the fresh aspirations and dreams of boyhood!  Dennis went to every school-committee meeting, and sat through all those late wranglings which used to keep me up till midnight and awake till morning.  He attended all the lectures to which foreign exiles sent me tickets begging me to come for the love of Heaven and of Bohemia.  He accepted and used all the tickets for charity concerts which were sent to me.  He appeared everywhere where it was specially desirable that “our denomination,” or “our party,” or “our class,” or “our family,” or “our street,” or “our town,” or “our county,” or “our State,” should be fully represented.  And I fell back to that charming life which in boyhood one dreams of, when he supposes he shall do his own duty and make his own sacrifices, without being tied up with those of other people.  My rusty Sanskrit, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and English began to take polish.  Heavens! how little I had done with them while I attended to my public duties!  My calls on my parishioners became the friendly, frequent, homelike sociabilities they were meant to be, instead of the hard work of a man goaded to desperation by the sight of his lists of arrears.  And preaching! what a luxury preaching was when I had on Sunday the whole result of an individual, personal week, from which to speak to a people whom all that week I had been meeting as hand-to-hand friend!  I never tired on Sunday, and was in condition to leave