Jimmy Duggan begins to pound on the table with a wooden hammer
what they uses in lodges and club rooms.
"A gavel, eh! Very well, me learned friend, I'll not dispute it.
"He bangs so hard they all quits their scrapping and begins to take
notice. 'I am just informed, gentlemen,' says Jimmy, 'that the
Honorable Fixem is now on the stairs on his way into this meeting, and
I would ask the ork-estra,' he says, 'to greet him with a few bars
of----'
"And just then the door opens, and a little procession comes in
escortin' the Honorable Fixem, and the ork-estra leader waves his hand
frantic and the ork-estra strikes up 'All Coons Look Alike to Me.'
Well, say, you'd orter heard the row. Some was cheerin' and some was
laughin', and the Honorable Fixem he was looking like a sheep outer the
meadows, and Jimmy Duggan yells out, 'Stop that tune, darn it,' he
says, and the ork-estra man leader he didn't hear what Jimmy says and
he thought that he wanted it louder, so he waves his hands like mad and
the ork-estra sails into that tune like they'd never quit it, until
Jimmy leans over and grabs the leader by the back of the neck and
nearly chokes the breath outer him, and the ork-estra is just comin'
for Jimmy en massey when the leader says something in Italian and they
sits down again looking kinder sad and strikes up 'See the Con'kring
Hero Comes,' and the Honorable Fixem gets on the platform. Gee! you'd
think that bunch'd never stop yellin'. They just cheered and cheered.
Then they begins to present illumernated addresses in every language
but Scotch, and my Pa says Scotch ain't anything but two scones on each
side of a burr. So when they gets through Jimmy Duggan calls on the
Honorable Fixem for a speech, and Fixem started in.
"Say, I never knowed a gover'ment was so much like angels before. The
things what the gover'ment's done for this country, judging by the way
Fixem told it, is enough to make people want to keep 'em in for ever.
My Pa says it's mostly guff, but the pollertishans has gotter feed the
people with that kinder guff ev'ry once in a while, he says, they get
fat on it, he says.
"Well, everything goes on fine 'cepting some cheers once in a while,
until the Honorable gets down to the gover'ment's plans for the
immigrants. And he says something about not stooping to bribe any man
to cast a vote for the gover'ment by promising to find work for him,
but there's a big programme of gover'ment works to be done
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