to place them and pillars spaced so that there would be a permanent danger of the roof falling in upon her customers.
She was active, too, in her church work and contributed half a wagon load of cakes and pies to the annual June church fair. The Minerva Circle met at her house and Naomi was introduced to those members whom she did not know already, and so launched in a series of sewing parties which she attended in a kind of misery because on account of Philip she could not answer honestly the persistent questions of her new women "friends." And Emma kept up as well her fervent activities as President of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, carrying war into the enemy's country, trying to drive whisky from a country of mills and furnaces where every other corner was occupied by a saloon. She even called upon Moses Slade, Congressman of the district, and lately become a widower, in his great boxlike house set back among the trees on Park Avenue. It was an odd call which began with open hostility when she urged him to wear a white ribbon and declare himself at once on the side of God and Purity.
But Slade, being a politician, felt that Fortune had not yet sided with God and Purity, and declined the honor with a great flow of eloquence for which he was famed. There was much talk of his being chosen to represent the majority of the people, and as yet the majority seemed unfortunately ("the human race is naturally wicked and must be educated to goodness—we must not forget that, Mrs. Downes") still on the side of gin.
He was a man of fifty, with a great stomach and
