ssue
before us with perfidious and Pacifistic platitudes. We say at once, and
let them note it, we will have none of them; we will have----" Here his
words were drowned by an interruption greater even than that; which was
fast gathering among the row of speakers behind him, and the surprised
audience in front; and he could see the large man being forced from the
door and up the aisle by a posse of noisy youths, till he stood with arms
pinioned, struggling to turn round, just in front of Mr. Lavender. Seeing
his speech thus endangered, the latter cried out at the top of his voice:
"Free speech, gentlemen, free speech; I have come here expressly to see
that we have nothing of the sort." At this the young men, who now filled
the aisle, raised a mighty booing.

"Gentlemen," shouted Mr. Lavender, waving his leaders, "gentlemen---" But
at this moment the large man was hurled into contact with what served Mr.
Lavender for stomach, and the two fell in confusion. An uproar ensued of
which Mr. Lavender was more than vaguely conscious, for many feet went
over him. He managed, however, to creep into a corner, and, getting up,
surveyed the scene. The young men who had invaded the meeting, much
superior in numbers and strength to the speakers, to the large man, and
the three or four other able-bodied persons who had rallied to them from
among the audience, were taking every advantage of their superiority; and
it went to Mr. Lavender's heart to see how they thumped and maltreated
their opponents. The sight of their brutality, indeed, rendered him so
furious that, forgetting all his principles and his purpose in coming to
the meeting, he climbed on to a form, and folding his arms tightly on his
breast, called out at the top of his voice:

"Cads! Do not thus take advantage of your numbers. Cads!" Having thus
defended what in his calmer moments he would have known to be the wrong,
he awaited his own fate calmly. But in the hubbub his words had passed
unnoticed. "It is in moments like these," he thought, "that the great
speaker asserts his supremacy, quells the storm, and secures himself a
hearing." And he began to rack his brains to remember how they did it.
"It must require the voice of an ox," he thought, "and the skin of an
alligator. Alas! How deficient I am in public qualities!" But his
self-depreciation was here cut off with the electric light. At this
sheer intervention of Providence Mr. Lavender, listening to the
disentangling s