would lead us all into the pit of destruction; like those other high-brow emasculates who mistake their pettifogging pedantry for pearls of price, and plaster the plain issue 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 sounds which rose in the black room, became aware that he had a chance such as he had not yet had of being heard.