"
The musician laughed carelessly, and, not deigning any other reply,
went to talk with his hostess.
CHAPTER IV
The Polterham Literary Institute was a "hot-bed of Radicalism." For
the last year or two this had been generally understood. Originating
in the editorial columns of the _Polterham Mercury_, the remark was
now a commonplace on the lips of good Conservatives, and the
liberals themselves were not unwilling to smile an admission of its
truth. At the founding of the Institute no such thing was foreseen;
but in 1859 Polterham was hardly conscious of the stirrings of that
new life which, in the course of twenty years, was to transform the
town. In those days a traveller descending the slope of the Banwell
Hills sought out the slim spire of Polterham parish church amid a
tract of woodland, mead and tillage; now the site of the thriving
little borough was but too distinctly marked by trails of smoke from
several gaunt chimneys--that of Messrs. Dimes & Nevison's
blanket-factory, that of Quarrier & Son's sugar-refinery, and,
higher still (said, indeed, to be one of the tallest chimneys in
England), that of Thomas & Liversedge's soap-works. With the
character of Polterham itself, the Literary Institute had suffered a
noteworthy change. Ostensibly it remained non-political: a library,
reading-room and lecture-hall, for the benefit of all the townsfolk;
but by a subtle process the executive authority had passed into the
hands of new men with new ideas.
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