Editor Fairchild had ready a motion that the building be taken on a lease, but that a special committee be appointed by the meeting to devise means for using it to assist the men of Thessaly now out of employment, and that until the present labor crisis was over, all questions of furnishing a club-house proper be laid on the table. He spoke vigorously in support of this measure, and when he had finished there was a significant round of applause.
Horace rose when order had been restored, and speaking with some hesitation, said that he would put the motion, and that if it were carried he would appoint such a committee, but——
“I said ‘to be appointed by the meeting’!” called out John Fairchild, sharply.
The president did not finish his sentence, but sat down again, and Tenney pushed forward and whispered in his ear. Two or three others gathered sympathetically about, and then still others joined the group formed about the president, and discussed eagerly in undertones this new situation.
“I must decline to put the motion. It does not arise out of the report. It is out of order,” answered Horace at last, as a result of this faction conference.
“Then I will put it myself,” cried Fairchild, rising. “But I beg first to move that you leave the chair!” Horace looked with angered uncertainty down upon the men who remained seated about Fairchild. They were as thirty to his ten, or thereabouts. He could not stand up against this majority. For a moment he had a fleeting notion of trying to conciliate it, and steer a middle course, but Tenney’s presence had made that impossible. He laid down his gavel, and, gathering up his hat and coat, stepped off the platform to the floor.
“There is no need of moving that,” he said. “I’ll go without it. So far as I am concerned, the meeting is over, and the club doesn’t exist.”
He led the way out, followed by Tenney, Jones the match-manufacturer, the Rev. Dr. Turner, and five or six others. One or two gentlemen rose as if to join the procession, and then thinking better of it sat down again.
By general suggestion, John Fairchild took the chair thus vacated, but beyond approving the outlines of his plan, and appointing a committee with Tracy at its head to see what could be done to carry it out, the meeting found very little to do. It was agreed that this committee should also consider the question of funds, and should call a meeting when it was ready to report, which should be at the earliest possible date.
Then the meeting broke up, and its members dispersed, not without well-founded apprehensions that they had heard the last of the Thessaly Citizens’ Club.