THE MEETINGS IN CAMP 20.
"You will remember that on the 8th there was a meeting. On the 15th they had another meeting in Camp 20, and after that meeting I have no doubt—and I have a right to talk in this way; it is only my opinion; it is an inference drawn from the evidence—after that meeting, I have no doubt that Dan Coughlin, the chairman of that committee, sat down and talked to John F. Beggs and considered that they had better notify the district member; that they had better fix up something to cover up matters in case anything came out afterward in reference to the affair. So that on the 16th, the day after their meeting up here—because they meet every Friday night—Dan Coughlin and John F. Beggs and other committeemen talked the matter over, and they decided they had better write to the district officer, Mr. Spelman, and tell him they wanted to find out something about Dr. Cronin's camp, for when Beggs writes his letter, he gives the number of the Columbia Club, and says the report was read in that camp. Well, they think they had better write to this district officer, and ask him to tell them something about what they shall do, and inquire of him about a matter they knew all about. You remember how the answer of Mr. Spelman came back, that he knew nothing in the constitution that gave him power to inflict a penalty. They had already, then, passed upon this man. This committee had already set their heads together and concluded it was necessary to inflict a penalty, and that is the reason why this Peoria man wrote that he knew nothing in the constitution that required him, or that gave him power to inflict a penalty on the senior guardian for having read the report of the trial committee in his camp. This was not written in all seriousness; it was written as a covering for what had happened in Camp 20.