Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/195

 *nant public feeling, the acting mayor, Mr. Robert H. Finch, very courageously vetoed the ordinance. But the machine "had the votes," and on the following Monday night the council met to pass the ordinance over the veto. The members of the Republican organization were there, favored with seats in the office of the city clerk; lobbyists and the legal representatives of the street railway company were there. The chamber was crowded; the hot air of the small, low-ceiled room was charged with a nervous tension; there was in it an eager expectant quality, not unmixed with dread and fear and guilt. The atmosphere was offensive to the moral sense—a condition remarked in other halls in this land when councils and legislatures have been about to take action that was inimical to the public good.

But the machine councilmen bore themselves jauntily enough; the windows were open to the soft night of the early autumn, and now and then some one sauntered in nonchalance over to the windows, and looked down into St. Clair Street, garish in the white and brilliant light of the electric signs of theaters, restaurants and saloons. The theater crowds were already going by, but it was to be noted that they loitered that evening, and were reenforced by other saunterers, as though the entertainment of the pavement might surpass that of the painted scene within. And above all the noises of the street, clanged the gongs of the street cars gliding by, and, for the moment, as a dramatic center of the scene, a squad of policemen was stationed in the lobby of the council chamber.