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