I was told, too, that the subject of my lecture had been warmly debated by the ladies of the Orthodox Sewing Circle, where Mrs. Silas Heywood, who had written several strong articles for the Patriot, which journal adopted them as its own, was heard to declare emphatically that she had never heard of this man Crabbe, though she had read no end of books.  Miss Bruce had been six quarters at the high-school, knew something of Latin and algebra, and had taken music lessons of Monsieur Pensin‚; but she had never heard of Crabbe until she read “Night and Morning,” where, out of sheer affectation, as it seemed to her, she found that the author had made sundry quotations from him to adorn the heads of his chapters.  As for Miss Leland, who had been two years abroad with her father and mother, and was supposed to know all about literature and the poets, she thought Mr. Crabbe could not be much, since she had not even heard of him while in England.  Mr. Faulkner, the storekeeper, had not a book of Crabbe on his shelves, though he dealt largely in hardware and literature, and was a very respectable scholar.  And Squire Brigham, the lawyer, who mixed himself up with other people’s business a great deal, busied himself in saying:  Crabbe must have been an obscure fellow, for though there was a pyramid of old books in his library, he had not one of this author’s among them; and perhaps he ought to be thankful for it, for indeed Mrs. Forbush had said to him in confidence, that she understood of the little deformed man that Crabbe had written some very bad things of lawyers.  Mrs. Forbush went regularly to Boston to get the fashions and attend the Lowell lectures; Mrs. Forbush had written a religious novel for the “Olive Branch;” Mrs. Forbush said, who would have thought of giving such a looking little creature five dollars and his victuals for lecturing upon such a subject

The cry of fire without, and the loud peals of an alarm bell, suddenly threw the town and the tavern into a state of great excitement.  Giles Sheridan stopped short in his discourse, and the inmates of the house rushed in great agitation into the street.  The alarm spread rapidly, and people began to run in every direction but the right one.  One declared it a false alarm.  That it was set on foot to afford recreation for the mischievous, another was quite sure.  A third was ready to swear he saw the incendiary run down “the lane.”  People ran in opposite directions, crying fire.  People, wayward and confused, were endeavoring to persuade one another that the scene of the fire was not in the direction they were going, though neither smoke nor flame could be seen in any part of the town.  And while the people were thus confused, an harsh and grating voice cried out that the fire was down the lane, a narrow pathway that led from one part of the town to another.  The confused figures of men who had stood contemplating here and there about the square, now rushed down the lane, and soon came in