made one of those crackling speeches--just the way
business men speak--the kind of speech that a college man simply can't
make. I wish I could repeat it all. I remember that it began: "Now boys,
you know what we're here for, gentlemen," and it went on just as good as
that all through. When Mullins had done he took out a fountain pen
and wrote out a cheque for a hundred dollars, conditional on the fund
reaching fifty thousand. And there was a burst of cheers all over the
room.

Just the moment he had done it, up sprang George Duff,--you know the
keen competition there is, as a straight matter of business, between the
banks in Mariposa,--up sprang George Duff, I say, and wrote out a cheque
for another hundred conditional on the fund reaching seventy thousand.
You never heard such cheering in your life.

And then when Netley walked up to the head of the table and laid down
a cheque for a hundred dollars conditional on the fund reaching one
hundred thousand the room was in an uproar. A hundred thousand dollars!
Just think of it! The figures fairly stagger one. To think of a hundred
thousand dollars raised in five minutes in a little place like Mariposa!

And even that was nothing! In less than no time there was such a crowd
round Mullins trying to borrow his pen all at once that his waistcoat
was all stained with ink. Finally when they got order at last, and
Mullins stood up and announced that the conditional fund had reached a
quarter of a million, the whole place was a perfect babel of cheering.
Oh, these Whirlwind Campaigns are wonderful things!

I can tell you the Committee felt pretty proud that first day. There was
Henry Mullins looking a little bit flushed and excited, with his white
waistcoat and an American Beauty rose, and with ink marks all over him
from the cheque signing; and he kept telling them that he'd known all
along that all that was needed was to get the thing started and telling
again about what he'd seen at the University Campaign and about the
professors crying, and wondering if the high school teachers would come
down for the last day of the meetings.

Looking back on the Mariposa Whirlwind, I can never feel that it was
a failure. After all, there is a sympathy and a brotherhood in
these things when men work shoulder to shoulder. If you had seen the
canvassers of the Committee going round the town that evening shoulder
to shoulder from the Mariposa House to the Continental and up to
Mullins's