His great resource the rest of the evening was standing in the library, carrying on animated conversations with one and another in much the same way.  Polly had initiated him in the mysteries of a discovery of mine, that it is not necessary to finish your sentence in a crowd, but by a sort of mumble, omitting sibilants and dentals.  This, indeed, if your words fail you, answers even in public extempore speech—­but better where other talking is going on.  Thus:  “We missed you at the Natural History Society, Ingham.”  Ingham replies:  “I am very gligloglum, that is, that you were m-m-m-m-m.”  By gradually dropping the voice, the interlocutor is compelled to supply the answer.  “Mrs. Ingham, I hope your friend Augusta is better.”  Augusta has not been ill.  Polly cannot think of explaining, however, and answers:  “Thank you, ma’am; she is very rearason wewahwewob,” in lower and lower tones.  And Mrs. Throckmorton, who forgot the subject of which she spoke, as soon as she asked the question, is quite satisfied.  Dennis could see into the card-room, and came to Polly to ask if he might not go and play all-fours.  But, of course, she sternly refused.  At midnight they came home delightedly:  Polly, as I said, wild to tell me the story of victory; only both the pretty Walton girls said:  “Cousin Frederic, you did not come near me all the evening.”

We always called him Dennis at home, for convenience, though his real name was Frederic Ingham, as I have explained.  When the election day came round, however, I found that by some accident there was only one Frederic Ingham’s name on the voting-list; and, as I was quite busy that day in writing some foreign letters to Halle, I thought I would forego my privilege of suffrage, and stay quietly at home, telling Dennis that he might use the record on the voting-list and vote.  I gave him a ticket, which I told him he might use, if he liked to.  That was that very sharp election in Maine which the readers of The Atlantic so well remember, and it had been intimated in public that the ministers would do well not to appear at the polls.  Of course, after that, we had to appear by self or proxy.  Still, Naguadavick was not then a city, and this standing in a double queue at townmeeting several hours to vote was a bore of the first water; and so, when I found that there was but one Frederic Ingham on the list, and that one of us must give up, I stayed at home and finished the letters (which, indeed, procured for Fothergill his coveted appointment of Professor of Astronomy at Leavenworth), and I gave Dennis, as we called him, the chance.  Something in the matter gave a good deal of popularity to the Frederic Ingham name; and at the adjourned election, next week, Frederic Ingham was chosen to the legislature.  Whether this was I or Dennis, I never really knew.  My friends seemed to think it was I; but I felt, that, as Dennis had done the popular thing, he was entitled to the honor; so I sent him to Augusta when the time