CHAPTER XLV.

The galleries of the House were packed, on the momentous day, not because

the reporting of an important bill back by a committee was a thing to be

excited about, if the bill were going to take the ordinary course

afterward; it would be like getting excited over the empaneling of a

coroner's jury in a murder case, instead of saving up one's emotions for

the grander occasion of the hanging of the accused, two years later,

after all the tedious forms of law had been gone through with.

But suppose you understand that this coroner's jury is going to turn out

to be a vigilance committee in disguise, who will hear testimony for an

hour and then hang the murderer on the spot? That puts a different

aspect upon the matter. Now it was whispered that the legitimate forms

of procedure usual in the House, and which keep a bill hanging along for

days and even weeks, before it is finally passed upon, were going to be

overruled, in this case, and short work made of the measure; and so,

what was beginning as a mere inquest might, torn out to be something very

different.

In the course of the day's business the Order of "Reports of Committees"

was finally reached and when the weary crowds heard that glad

announcement issue from the Speaker's lips they ceased to fret at the

dragging delay, and plucked up spirit. The Chairman of the Committee on

Benevolent Appropriations rose and made his report, and just then a

blue-uniformed brass-mounted little page put a note into his hand.

474

The Gilded Age