that its proper place was
under the head of new business, where it might be taken up in the
discussion of the administration's attitude toward the negro.

[Illustration: THE BISHOP'S ADDRESS.]

"We are here, gentlemen," pursued the bland presiding officer, "to
make public sentiment, but we must not try to make it too fast; so if
our young friend from Ohio will only hold his resolution a little
longer, it will be acted upon at the proper time. We must be moderate
and conservative."

Gray sprang to his feet and got the chairman's eye. His face was
flushed and he almost shouted: "Conservatism be hanged! We have rolled
that word under our tongues when we were being trampled upon; we have
preached it in our churches when we were being shot down; we have
taught it in our schools when the right to use our learning was denied
us, until the very word has come to be a reproach upon a black man's
tongue!"

There were cries of "Order! Order!" and "Sit down!" and the gavel was
rattling on the chairman's desk. Then some one rose to a point of
order, so dear to the heart of the negro debater. The point was
sustained and the Ohioan yielded the floor, but not until he had gazed
straight into the eyes of Miss Kirkman as they rose from her notebook.
She turned red. He curled his lip and sat down, but the blood burned
in his face, and it was not the heat of shame, but of anger and
contempt that flushed his cheeks.

This outbreak was but the precursor of other storms to follow. Every
one had come with an idea to exploit or some proposition to advance.
Each one had his panacea for all the aches and pains of his race. Each
man who had paid his five dollars wanted his full five dollars' worth
of talk. The chairman allowed them five minutes apiece, and they
thought time dear at a dollar a minute. But there were speeches to be
made for buncombe, and they made the best of the seconds. They howled,
they raged, they stormed. They waxed eloquent or pathetic. Jones of
Georgia was swearing softly and feelingly into Shackelford's ear.
Shackelford was sympathetic and nervous as he fingered a large bundle
of manuscript in his back pocket. He got up several times and called
"Mr. Chairman," but his voice had been drowned in the tumult. Amid it
all, calm and impassive, sat the man, who of all others was expected
to be in the heat of the fray.

It had been rumored that Courtney of the _New York Beacon_ had come to
Washington with blood in his ey