Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/252

 MARK TWAIN

Minister of Etiquette and a sergeant-at-arms, and then things will go better. I mean if parliament and the Constitution survive the present storm.

��IV. THE HISTORIC CLIMAX

During the whole of November things went from bad to worse. The all-important Ausgleick remained hard aground, and could not be sparred off. Badeni s government could not withdraw the Language Ordi nance and keep its majority, and the Opposition could not be placated on easier terms. One night, while the customary pandemonium was crashing and thundering along at its best, a fight broke out. It was a surging, struggling, shoulder-to-shoulder scramble. A great many blows were struck. Twice Schonerer lifted one of the heavy ministerial fauteuils some say with one hand and threatened members of the Majority with it, but it was wrenched away from him; a member hammered Wolf over the head with the President s bell, and another member choked him; a professor was flung down and belabored with fists and choked; he held up an open penknife as a defense against the blows; it was snatched from him and flung to a distance; it hit a peaceful Christian Socialist who wasn t doing anything, and brought blood from his hand. This was the only blood drawn. The men who got hammered and choked looked sound and well next day. The fists and the

speakers was studiously formal and academic, and the storms and explosions of to-day were wholly unknown,&quot; etc. Translation of the opening remark of an editorial in this morning s Neue Freie Presse, December j,

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