it momentarily a mixed
worldly and political and satanic cast. It is a most interesting face
to watch. And then the long hands and the body--they furnish great and
frequent help to the face in the business of adding to the force of the
statesman's words.

To change the tense. At the time of which I have just been speaking the
crowds in the galleries were gazing at the stage and the pit with rapt
interest and expectancy. One half of the great fan of desks was in
effect empty, vacant; in the other half several hundred members were
bunched and jammed together as solidly as the bristles in a brush; and
they also were waiting and expecting. Presently the Chair delivered this
utterance:

'Dr. Lecher has the floor.'

Then burst out such another wild and frantic and deafening clamour as
has not been heard on this planet since the last time the Comanches
surprised a white settlement at night. Yells from the Left,
counter-yells from the Right, explosions of yells from all sides
at once, and all the air sawed and pawed and clawed and cloven by a
writhing confusion of gesturing arms and hands. Out of the midst of this
thunder and turmoil and tempest rose Dr. Lecher, serene and collected,
and the providential length of his enabled his head to show out of it.
He began his twelve-hour speech. At any rate, his lips could be seen to
move, and that was evidence. On high sat the President, imploring order,
with his long hands put together as in prayer, and his lips visibly but
not hearably speaking. At intervals he grasped his bell and swung it
up and down with vigour, adding its keen clamour to the storm weltering
there below.

Dr. Lecher went on with his pantomime speech, contented, untroubled.
Here and there and now and then powerful voices burst above the din,
and delivered an ejaculation that was heard. Then the din ceased for a
moment or two, and gave opportunity to hear what the Chair might answer;
then the noise broke out again. Apparently the President was being
charged with all sorts of illegal exercises of power in the interest of
the Right (the Government side): among these, with arbitrarily closing
an Order of Business before it was finished; with an unfair distribution
of the right to the floor; with refusal of the floor, upon quibble and
protest, to members entitled to it; with stopping a speaker's speech
upon quibble and protest; and with other transgressions of the Rules of
the House. One of the interrupters who made