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The road lay untouched until ten o'clock, when a selectman gave notice that it was an occasion for "breakin' out," by starting with his team, and gathering oxen by the way until a conquering procession ground through the drifts, the men shoveling at intervals where the snow lay deepest, the oxen walking swayingly, head to the earth, and the faint wreath of their breath ascending and cooling on the air.
He was the first selectman of Smyrna, Cap'n Aaron Sproul. And when the ladies, at a signal from Foreman Look, took stations at the van door and began to distribute the baskets, whisperings announced that they were respectively the wives of Cap'n Sproul and the foreman of Hecla One.
He sat staring above it at the iron visage of the first selectman, who finally grew restive under this espionage. "Say, look-a-here, Pote Tate," he growled, levelling flaming eyes across the table, "if you think you're goin' to set there lookin' at me like a Chessy cat watchin' a rat-hole, you and me is goin' to have trouble, and have it sudden and have it vi'lent!"
"Stay yet a while," said the Selectman, as Hutchinson again snatched the pen; "for if ever mortal man received a warning from a tormented soul, your Honor is that man!" "Away!" answered Hutchinson fiercely. "Though yonder senseless picture cried 'Forbear! it should not move me!" Then, it is said, he shuddered, as if that signature had granted away his salvation.
"In transactin' business it ain't no time for jokin'," protested the direct Mr. Nute. "There's no joke to it," returned the Cap'n, viciously, seizing a pickaxe. "It ain't much of a way for a first selectman of a town to act in public," persisted Constable Nute, "when town business is put before him."
The showman grasped the selectman by the coat-lapel and demanded earnestly: "Didn't you figger it as I did, when you got so you could set up and take notice, that she wasn't all right in her head?" "Softer'n a jelly-fish!" declared the Cap'n, with unction. "Then she's got crazier, and up all of a sudden and followed us and don't care which one she gets!"
Chester tightened up his reins so suddenly that his horse reared, while Jethro calmly climbed into the seat beside him and they drove off. It was some time before Joe had recovered sufficiently to arise and repair to the scene of operations on the road. It was Joe who brought the astounding news to the store that evening. Chester was Jethro's own candidate for senior Selectman!
Smyrna gossips were beginning to comment, with more or less spite, on the sudden friendship between their first selectman and Hiram Look, since Look once owner of a road circus had retired from the road, had married his old love, and had settled down on the Snell farm.
"There ain't a first selectman in this State that has shown any more science in handlin' his job than Cap'n Aaron Sproul of this town." "When you come to remember back how he's grabbed in and taken the brunt every time there's been anything that needed to be handled proper, you've got to admit all what you've said, Mr. Look," assented another of the party.
I used to know a boy, who afterwards grew to be a selectman, and brushed his hair straight up like General Jackson, and went to the legislature, where he always voted against every measure that was proposed, in the most honest manner, and got the reputation of being the "watch-dog of the treasury." Rats in the cellar were nothing to be compared to this boy for destructiveness in pies.
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