“Instead of having to listen to me you’d better just look at this,” said the Butterfly Man.  “Because this can talk louder and say more in a minute than I could between now and Judgment.”  And he held out Louisa’s dear fair whimsy of a curl; the sort of curl mothers tuck behind a rosy ear of nights, and fathers lean to and kiss. “I haven’t got anything to say,” said the Butterfly Man.  “The best I can do is just to wish for the children all that Louisa pretended to pull out of her wishin’ curl—­and never got.  I wish on it that all the kids get a square deal—­their chance to grow and play and be healthy and happy and make good.  And I wish again,” said the Butterfly Man, looking at his hearers with his steady eyes, “I wish that you folks, every God-blessed one of you, will help to make that wish come true, so far as lies in your power, from now until you die!” His funny, twisty smile flashed out.  He put the fairy tress back into his breast pocket, made a casual gesture to imply that he had concluded his wishes for the present; and walked off in the midst of the deepest silence that had ever fallen upon an Appleboro audience.

But however willing we might be, we discovered that we could not do things as quickly or as well as might be wished.  People who wanted to help blundered tactlessly.  People who wanted to be helped had to be investigated.  People who ought to be helped were suspicious and resentful, couldn’t always understand or appreciate this sudden interest in their affairs, were inclined to slam doors, or, when cornered, to lie stolidly, with wooden faces and expressionless eyes.

Ensued an awkward pause, until the Butterfly Man came unobtrusively forward, discovering in himself that amazing diplomacy inherent in the Irish when they attend to anybody’s business but their own.  It was amusing to watch the only democrat in a solidly Democratic county infusing something of his own unabashed humanness into proceedings which but for him might have sloughed into

    Organized charity, carefully iced,
    In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ.

Having done what was to be done, he went about his own affairs.  Nobody gushed over him, and he escaped that perilous popularity which is as a millstone around a man’s neck.  Nevertheless the Butterfly Man had stumbled upon the something divine in his fellows, and they entertained for him a feeling that wasn’t any more tangible, say, than pure air, and no more emotional than pure water, but was just about as vital and life-giving.

I was enchanted to have a whole county endorse my private judgment.  I rose so in my own estimation that I fancy I was a bit condescending to St. Stanislaus!  I was vain of the Butterfly Man’s standing—­folks couldn’t like him too much, to please me.  And I was greatly interested in the many invitations that poured in upon him, invitations that ranged all the way from a birthday party at Michael Karski’s to a state dinner at the Eustis’s.