After the meeting had been called to order, and Sam had taken an oath of a hot and lurid nature, in which he renounced a good many things he had never possessed, and promised to do a lot of things of which he had no idea, Mr. Offitt asked “if any brother had anything to offer for the good of the order.”  This called Mr. Bott to his feet, and he made a speech, on which he had been brooding all day, against the pride of so-called science, the arrogance of unrighteous wealth, and the grovelling superstition of Christianity.  The light of the kerosene lamp shone full on the decorated side of his visage, and touched it to a ferocious purpose.  But the brotherhood soon wearied of his oratory, in which the blasphemy of thought and phrase was strangely contrasted with the ecclesiastical whine which he had caught from the exhorters who were the terror of his youth.  The brothers began to guy him without mercy.  They requested him to “cheese it”; they assisted him with uncalled-for and inappropriate applause, and one of the party got behind him and went through the motion of turning a hurdy-gurdy.  But he persevered.  He had joined the club to practise public speaking, and he got a good half hour out of the brothers before they coughed him down.

When he had brought his speech to a close, and sat down to wipe his streaming face, a brother rose and said, in a harsh, rasping voice, “I want to ask a question.”

“That’s in order, Brother Bowersox,” said Offitt.

The man was a powerful fellow, six feet high.  His head was not large, but it was as round as an apple, with heavy cheek-bones, little eyes, close-cut hair, and a mustache like the bristles of a blacking-brush.  He had been a driver on a streetcar, but had recently been dismissed for insolence to passengers and brutality to his horses.

“What I want to ask is this:  I want to know if we have joined this order to listen to chin-music the rest of our lives, or to do somethin’.  There is some kind of men that kin talk tell day of jedgment, lettin’ Gabrel toot and then beginnin’ ag’in.  I ain’t that kind; I j’ined to do somethin’;—­what’s to be done?”

He sat down with his hand on his hip, squarely facing the luckless Bott, whose face grew as purple as the illuminated side of it.  But he opened not his mouth.  Offitt answered the question: 

“I would state,” he said glibly, “the objects we propose to accomplish:  the downfall of the money power, the rehabitation of labor, the——­”

“Oh, yes!” Bowersox interrupted, “I know all about that,—­but what are we goin’ to do?”

Offitt paled a little, but did not flinch at the savage tone of the surly brute.  He began again in his smoothest manner: 

“I am of the opinion that the discussion of sound principles, such as we have listened to to-night, is among the objects of our order.  After that, organization for mutual profit and protection against the minions of the money power,—­for makin’ our influence felt in elections,—­for extendin’ a helpin’ hand to honest toil,—­for rousin’ our bretheren from their lethargy, which, like a leaden pall——­”