Members began to take their seats and to call pages by clapping their hands. The cloak-rooms and barber-shop resounded with laughter. Newspaper men sauntered by, addressing Radbourn and asking for news. And here and there others, like Radbourn, were acting as guides to groups of visitors.
In the midst of the growing tumult a one-armed man entered the speaker's desk and called out in snappy tenor—
"Gentlemen, I am requested by the door-keeper to ask all persons not entitled to the floor to please retire."
Bradley started, but Radbourn said, "No hurry, you have fifteen minutes yet. As a member-elect you have the courtesy of the floor anyway. Do you want to meet anybody?"
"No, I guess not. I just want to look on for to-day."
"Well, we'll go up in the gallery."
Looking down upon the floor and its increasing swarm of individuals, Bradley got a complete sense of its vastness and its complexity and noise.
"It makes the Iowa legislature seem like a school-room," he said to Radbourn.
At precisely noon the gavel fell with a single sharp stroke, and the speaker called persuasively, "The house will please be in order." The members rose and stood reluctantly, some of them sharpening their pencils, others reading while the chaplin prayed sonorously with many oratorical cadences, taking in all the departments of government in the swing of his generous benediction.
Instantly at the word "Amen," like the popping of a cork, the tumult burst out again. Hands clapped, laughter flared out, desks were slammed, papers were rattled, feet pounded, and the brazen monotonous clanging voice of the clerk sounded above it all like some new steam calliope whose sounds were words.