The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

twenty cents, as representing the true value of this barren and isolated

tract of desolation.”

The question, according to rule, was taken upon the smallest sum first.

It was lost.

Then upon the nest smallest sum. Lost, also.

And then upon the three millions. After a vigorous battle that lasted a

considerable time, this motion was carried.

Then, clause by clause the bill was read, discussed, and amended in

trifling particulars, and now the Committee rose and reported.

The moment the House had resumed its functions and received the report,

Mr. Buckstone moved and carried the third reading of the bill.

The same bitter war over the sum to be paid was fought over again, and

now that the ayes and nays could be called and placed on record, every

man was compelled to vote by name on the three millions, and indeed on

every paragraph of the bill from the enacting clause straight through.

But as before, the friends of the measure stood firm and voted in a solid

body every time, and so did its enemies.

The supreme moment was come, now, but so sure was the result that not

even a voice was raised to interpose an adjournment. The enemy were

totally demoralized. The bill was put upon its final passage almost

without dissent, and the calling of the ayes and nays began. When it was

ended the triumph was complete–the two-thirds vote held good, and a veto

was impossible, as far as the House was concerned!

Mr. Buckstone resolved that now that the nail was driven home, he would

clinch it on the other side and make it stay forever. He moved a

reconsideration of the vote by which the bill had passed. The motion was

lost, of course, and the great Industrial University act was an

accomplished fact as far as it was in the power of the House of

Representatives to make it so.

There was no need to move an adjournment. The instant the last motion

was decided, the enemies of the University rose and flocked out of the

Hall, talking angrily, and its friends flocked after them jubilant and

congratulatory. The galleries disgorged their burden, and presently the

house was silent and deserted.

When Col. Sellers and Washington stepped out of the building they were

surprised to find that the daylight was old and the sun well up. Said

the Colonel:

“Give me your hand, my boy! You’re all right at last! You’re a

millionaire! At least you’re going to be. The thing is dead sure.

Don’t you bother about the Senate. Leave me and Dilworthy to take care

of that. Run along home, now, and tell Laura. Lord, it’s magnificent

news–perfectly magnificent! Run, now. I’ll telegraph my wife. She

must come here and help me build a house. Everything’s all right now!”

Washington was so dazed by his good fortune and so bewildered by the

gaudy pageant of dreams that was already trailing its long ranks through

his brain, that he wandered he knew not where, and so loitered by the way

that when at last he reached home he woke to a sudden annoyance in the

fact that his news must be old to Laura, now, for of course Senator

Dilworthy must have already been home and told her an hour before. He

knocked at her door, but there was no answer.

“That is like the Duchess,” said he. “Always cool; a body can’t excite

her-can’t keep her excited, anyway. Now she has gone off to sleep again,

as comfortably as if she were used to picking up a million dollars every

day or two”

Then he vent to bed. But he could not sleep; so he got up and wrote a

long, rapturous letter to Louise, and another to his mother. And he

closed both to much the same effect:

“Laura will be queen of America, now, and she will be applauded, and

honored and petted by the whole nation. Her name will be in every

one’s mouth more than ever, and how they will court her and quote

her bright speeches. And mine, too, I suppose; though they do that

more already, than they really seem to deserve. Oh, the world is so

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