“Fond of a row?” suggested Miss Thorn, with a laugh. “Yes, I fancy I am. I am fond of all active things. Are not you?”
“I do not know,” said John. “I never thought much about it. But I suppose I should be called rather an active person.”
“Is not she beautiful?” ejaculated Miss Thorn, looking across the room at Sybil Brandon, whose fair head was just visible between two groups of people.
“Who?” asked John, who was looking at his companion.
“Miss Brandon,” said Joe. “Look at her, over there. I think she is the most beautiful thing I ever saw.”
“Yes,” said John, “she is very beautiful.”
Chapter IV.
All sorts and conditions of men and women elbowed and crowded each other under the dim gaslight at the three entrances to the Boston Music Hall. The snow was thick on the ground outside, and it had been thawing all the afternoon. The great booby sleighs slid and slipped and rocked through the wet stuff, the policemen vociferated, the horse-car drivers on Tremont Street rang their bells furiously, and a great crowd of pedestrians stumbled and tumbled about in the mud and slush and snow of the crossings, all bent on getting inside the Music Hall in time for the beginning of the lecture.
The affair was called a “lecture” in accordance with the time-honored custom of Boston, and unless it were termed an oration, it would be hard to find a better name for it. A “meeting” implies a number of orators, or at least a well-filled row of chairs upon the platform. A “lecture,” on the other hand, does not convey to the ordinary mind the idea of a political speech, and critical persons with a taste for etymology say that the word means something which is read.
John Harrington had determined to speak in public on certain subjects connected with modern politics, and had caused the fact to be extensively made known. His name alone would have sufficed to draw a large audience, but the great attention he had attracted by his doings for some time past, and the severe criticisms lately made upon him by the local press, rendered the interest even greater than it would otherwise have been. Moreover, the lecture was free. Harrington was a poor man, as fortunes go in Boston, but it was his chiefest principle that a man had no right to be paid for speaking the truth, even though it might sometimes be just that people should pay something for hearing it. Accordingly the lecture was free, and at the appointed hour the house was full to overflowing.