laborer, and the laborer only, the reward of labor.  As Ellen went on reading calmly, with the steadfastness of one promulgating principles, not the excitement of one carried away by enthusiasm, she began to be interrupted by applause, but she read on, never wavering, her clear voice overcoming everything.  She was quite innocently throwing her wordy bomb to the agitation of public sentiment.  She had no thought of such an effect.  She was stating what she believed to be facts with her youthful dogmatism.  She had no fear lest the facts strike too hard.  The school-master’s face grew long with dismay; he sat pulling his mustache in a fashion he had when disturbed.  He glanced uneasily now and then at Mr. Lloyd, and at another leading manufacturer who was present.  The other manufacturer sat quite stolid and unsmiling beside a fidgeting wife, who presently arose and swept out with a loud rustle of silks.  She looked back once and beckoned angrily to her husband, but he did not stir.  He was on the school-board.  The school-master trembled when he saw that imperturbable face of storing recollection before him.  Mr. Lloyd leaned towards Lyman Risley, who sat beside him and whispered and laughed.  It was quite evident that he did not consider the flight of this little fledgling in the face of things seriously.  But even he, as Ellen’s clearly delivered sentiments grew more and more defined—­almost anarchistic—­became a little grave in spite of the absurd incongruity between them and the girlish lips.  Once he looked in some wonder at the school-teacher as much as to say, “Why did you permit this?” and the young man pulled his mustache harder.

When Ellen finished and made her bow, such a storm of applause arose as had never before been heard at a high-school exhibition.  The audience was for the most part composed of factory employes and their families, as most of the graduates were of that class of the community.  Many of them were of foreign blood, people who had come to the country expecting the state of things advocated in Ellen’s valedictory, and had remained more or less sullen and dissenting at the non-fulfilment of their expectation.  One tall Swede, with a lurid flashing of blue eyes under a thick, blond thatch, led the renewed charges of applause.  Red spots came on his cheeks, gaunt with high cheekbones; his cold Northern blood was up.  He stood upreared against a background of the crowd under the balcony; he stamped when the applause died low; then it swelled again and again like great waves.  The Swede brandished his long arms, he shouted, others echoed him.  Even the women hallooed in a frenzy of applause, they clapped their hands, they stood up in their seats.  Only a few sat silent and contemptuous through all the enthusiasm.  Thomas Briggs, the manufacturer, was one of them.  He sat like a rock, his great, red, imperturbable face of dissent fixed straight ahead.  Mrs. Lloyd clapped wildly, on account of the girl who had read the valedictory.