He pulled his sleeve from her hand, hardly knowing that it was there, and kept at his shouting.
The only man to whom they would listen was, at last, the man who had so roused them. When, after a hurried conference with the chairman, and others, this man rose again, they listened—in the vague expectation that something would now be said which would excite them further.
“Don’t be senseless fools!” he shouted. “This is no better than a neat, printed protest. ‘Something must be done!’ Say what it is that you are going to do, or you may as well go home.”
He turned pointedly toward a dark-bearded man who was evidently expected to follow him. This man rose and shook out a paper. He shouted shrilly and wagged his head in his effort to make himself heard, and his long hair swung at the sides.
“At this moment,” he rehearsed, “eighteen meetings such as this are being held in eighteen towns—New York, Baltimore, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Salt Lake, Denver, Omaha, Portland, Spokane, St. Louis, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Milwaukee—these and the others are holding meetings like this. You know how each meeting is to take action and transmit that action to-night to each of the other meeting places. I ask you: what is it that this meeting is going to do? And Mr. Chairman, I make you a motion.”
The hall was so silent that it seemed drained of breathing: so electric with listening that it seemed drained of thought.
“Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, ay, and Ladies, for I deem you fully worthy to have a share in these deliberations,” said he, with a magnificent bow. “I move you, that, Whereas our government in its wisdom has seen fit to withhold itself from the great drama of the world’s business for a length of time not to be tolerated by a great mass of its citizens: and, Whereas, since the destruction of the steamship Fowler, a merchant vessel, belonging to the United States and sailing neutral waters, three days have elapsed without action on the part of the government thus outraged past all precedent in conduct toward neutral nations—save only one nation!—That now, therefore, we here assembled, citizens of the United States, do voice our protest and demand of our government that if within the week no adequate explanation or apology shall be forthcoming from the offending power, we do proceed without further delay to declare war against that power.
“And I further move you that it be the sense of this meeting that we hereby petition for immediate mobilization of our army.
“And I further move you that, on the carrying of this motion, a copy of it be telegraphed to the President of the United States, and to the Chairmen of the eighteen similar meetings held in the United States this night, in the common name of liberty and humanity.”