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Speech! Speech!"
People jumped up and crowded around Wilson, wringing his hand and
congratulating fervently--meantime the Chair was hammering with the gavel
and shouting:
"Order, gentlemen! Order! Order! Let me finish reading, please." When
quiet was restored, the reading was resumed--as follows:
"'Go, and reform--or, mark my words--some day, for your sins you will
die and go to hell or Hadleyburg--TRY AND MAKE IT THE FORMER.'"
A ghastly silence followed. First an angry cloud began to settle darkly
upon the faces of the citizenship; after a pause the cloud began to rise,
and a tickled expression tried to take its place; tried so hard that it
was only kept under with great and painful difficulty; the reporters, the
Brixtonites, and other strangers bent their heads down and shielded their
faces with their hands, and managed to hold in by main strength and
heroic courtesy. At this most inopportune time burst upon the stillness
the roar of a solitary voice--Jack Halliday's:
"
That's got the hall-mark on it!"
Then the house let go, strangers and all. Even Mr. Burgess's gravity
broke down presently, then the audience considered itself officially
absolved from all restraint, and it made the most of its privilege. It
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