“The order of the day,” resumed the little widow placidly, “is, Shall marriage in the Consol—­”

“Legislature!” piped a weak voice in the crowd.  “They only laugh at us in the legislature.”

“Let them laugh:  they laughed at the slave.”  The speaker hurled this in a deep bass voice full at McCall.  She was a black-browed, handsome young woman, wrapped in a good deal of scarlet, who sat sideways on one chair with her feet on the rung of another.  “How long will the world dare to laugh?” fixing him fiercely with her eye.

“Upon my word, madam, I don’t know,” McCall gasped, and checked himself, hot and uncomfortable.

A fat, handsomely-dressed woman jolted the chair in front of her to command attention:  “On the question of marriage—­”

“Address the chair,” growled Bluhm.

“Miss Chairman, I want to say that I ought to be qualified to speak on marriage, being the mother of ten, to say nothing of twice twins.”

“The question before the house is the street-car passes,” thundered Bluhm.  “I move that we at least thank them for their offer.  When a cup of tea is passed me, I thank the giver:  when the biscuits are handed, I do likewise.  It is a simple matter of courtesy.”

“I deny it,” said the black-browed female with a tone of tragedy.  “What substantial tea has been offered? what biscuits have been baked?  It is not tea:  it is bribery!  It is not biscuits:  it is corruption!”

“I second Herr Bluhm’s motion.”

“Miss Chairman, put the question on its passage.”

A mild old Quakeress rose, thus called on:  “Thee has made a motion, Friend Bluhm, and Sister Carr says she seconds it; so it seems to me—­Indeed I don’t understand this parliamentary work.”

“You’re doing very nicely.”

“All right!” called out several voices.

“Why should we have these trivial parliamentary forms?” demanded the Tragic Muse, as McCall called her.  “Away with all worn-out garments of a degraded Past!  Shall the rebellious serf of man still wear his old clothes?”

“But,” whispered McCall to Bluhm, “when will the great thinkers you talked of begin to speak on those mighty truths—­”

“Patience!  These are our great thinkers.  The logical heads some of them have!  Woman,” standing up and beginning aloud, apropos to nothing—­“Woman is destined to purify the ballot-box, reform the jury, whiten the ermine of the judge. [Applause.] When her divine intuitions, her calm reason, are brought into play—­” Prolonged applause, in the midst of which Bluhm, again apropos to nothing, abruptly sat down.

“The order of the day,” said the little woman in black, “is, Shall marriage—­”

“What about the car company?”

“Let’s shelve that.”

“The question of marriage,” began Bluhm, up again with a statelier wrap of his toga, “is the most momentous affecting mankind.  It demands free speech, the freest speech.  Are we resolved to approach it in proud humility, giving to the God within ourselves and within our neighbor freedom to declare the truth?”