“I presume, sir, that you are canvassing for new desks,” said Miss Hender, with dignity.  “You will have to see the supervisor and the selectmen.”  There did not seem to be any need of his lingering, but she had an ardent desire to be pleasing to a person of such evident distinction.  “We always tell strangers—­I thought, sir, you might be gratified to know—­that this is the school-house where the Honorable Joseph K. Laneway first attended school.  All do not know that he was born in this town, and went West very young; it is only about a mile from here where his folks used to live.”

At this moment the visitor’s eyes fell.  He did not look at pretty Marilla any more, but opened Johnny Spencer’s arithmetic, and, seeing the imaginary portrait of the great General Laneway, laughed a little,—­a very deep-down comfortable laugh it was,—­while Johnny himself turned cold with alarm, he could not have told why.

It was very still in the school-room; the bee was buzzing and bumping at the pane again; the moment was one of intense expectation.

The stranger looked at the children right and left.  “The fact is this, young people,” said he, in a tone that was half pride and half apology, “I am Joseph K. Laneway myself.”

He tried to extricate himself from the narrow quarters of the desk, but for an embarrassing moment found that he was stuck fast.  Johnny Spencer instinctively gave him an assisting push, and once free the great soldier, statesman, and millionaire took a few steps forward to the open floor; then, after hesitating a moment, he mounted the little platform and stood in the teacher’s place.  Marilla Hender was as pale as ashes.

“I have thought many times,” the great guest began, “that some day I should come back to visit this place, which is so closely interwoven with the memories of my childhood.  In my counting-room, on the fields of war, in the halls of Congress, and most of all in my Western home, my thoughts have flown back to the hills and brooks of Winby and to this little old school-house.  I could shut my eyes and call back the buzz of voices, and fear my teacher’s frown, and feel my boyish ambitions waking and stirring in my breast.  On that bench where I just sat I saw some notches that I cut with my first jackknife fifty-eight years ago this very spring.  I remember the faces of the boys and girls who went to school with me, and I see their grandchildren before me.  I know that one is a Goodsoe and another a Winn by the old family look.  One generation goes, and another comes.

“There are many things that I might say to you.  I meant, even in those early restricted days, to make my name known, and I dare say that you too have ambition.  Be careful what you wish for in this world, for if you wish hard enough you are sure to get it.  I once heard a very wise man say this, and the longer I live the more firmly I believe it to be true.  But wishing hard means working hard for what you want,