“Don’t you worry any about that, Pote,” snapped the selectman.  “No one round here is losin’ sight of the main point.  Main point is for churches and temperance workers and wimmen’s auxiliaries to sell as much grub as they can to visitors, and for citizens to parade round behind a brass-band like mules with the spring-halt, and to spend the money that I had ready to clear off the town debt.  And if any one thinks about the town bein’ a hundred years old, it’ll be next mornin’ when he wakes up and feels that way himself.  You and me is the losin’ minority this time, Pote.  I didn’t want it at all, and you want it something diff’runt.”  He looked the gaunt figure up and down with a little of the sympathy that one feels for a fellow-victim.  Then he gave out stamps for the letters.  “As long as it’s got to be spent, this is about the innocentest way of spendin’ it,” he muttered.

XXXII

As the great occasion drew nearer, Mr. Tate redoubled his epistolary efforts.  He was goaded by two reasons.  He had not secured his notables for the literary programme; he would soon have neither excuse nor stamps for collecting autographs.  He descended into the lower levels of genius and fame.  He wound up his campaign of solicitation with a stack of letters that made the Cap’n gasp.  But the chairman gave out the stamps with a certain amount of savage satisfaction in doing it, for some of the other hateful treasury-raiders would have to go without, and he anticipated that Poet Tate, suggester of the piracy, would meet up with proper retribution from his own ilk when the committee in final round-up discovered how great an inroad the autograph-seeker had made in the funds.  The Cap’n had shrewd fore-vision as to just how Smyrna would view the expenditure of money in that direction.

For the first time, he gazed on his secretary with a sort of kindly light in his eyes, realizing and relishing the part that Consetena was playing.  On his own part, Poet Tate welcomed this single gleam of kindly feeling, as the Eskimo welcomes the first glimpse of the vernal sun.  He ran to his portfolio.

“I have it finished, Captain!” he cried.  “It is the effort of my life.  To you I offer it first of all—­you shall have the first bloom of it.  It begins”—­he clutched the bulky manuscript in shaking hands—­“it begins: 

   “Ethereal Goddess, come, oh come, I pray,
    And press thy fingers, on this festal day,
    Upon my fevered brow and—­”

“May I ask what you’re settin’ about to do, there?” inquired Cap’n Sproul, balefully.

“It is my poem!  I am about to read it to you, to offer it to you as head of our municipality.  I will read it to you.”

The Cap’n waited for the explanation patiently.  He seemed to want to make sure of the intended enormity of the offence.  He even inquired:  “How much do you reckon there is of it?”

“Six thousand lines,” said Mr. Tate, with an author’s pride.