Common Cause: A Novel of the War in America

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

Wanser and Fliess, Kimball, Laurens, ex-Governor Scudder, Montrose Clark, the Reverend Theo Gunst, Lieutenant-Governor Maxwell, Ensign, Bredle, Girdner, Ivanson, the Swede, and so on with the German and pacifist element always slightly but safely in the majority. Not a word was spoken, except once when in a brief breathing-pause some one shot out, like an arrow through the tense quiet, the contemptuous monosyllable:

“Packed!”

Jeremy thought that he identified the voice as that of Judge Selden Dana. Then the reader pronounced the name of Professor Harvey Rappelje.

“Wait!” said that gentleman.

“Order! Order!” protested Wanser and Bausch with suspicious readiness.

“I am in order,” retorted the economist, rising in his place to confront the Governor opposite.

The Governor smiled, but thrust out a nervous tongue and licked the corners of the smile. The professor’s face was as set and still as a frozen river, and much the same color. Embree, motioning with a placating hand for silence, resumed: “The Honorable Carter N. Rock—”

“Wait!” The scholar’s keener voice cut off the reading. “I rise to a point of order, sir.”

“State the point.”

“Governor Embree, is that your honest conception of a council to fight this war?”