Page:The gold brick (1910).djvu/120

 vote aye, and those opposed will vote no, when their names are called, and the clerk will call the roll.' The gavel fell, and the speaker, holding it where it had fallen, leaned half his length over his desk and motioned to Hen Harvey. Hen had taken off his coat and vest and collar—he would call that roll himself—and as he unbuttoned his cuffs, inclining his head toward the speaker, 'Zeke yelled in his ear:

"'Now, Hen, damn it, call that roll to beat all hell.'

"Then we knew that the Bailey bill fight was on to a finish. We had had our first big battle with the reformers, and were down together in the last ditch. Whenever a bill with something in it is about to pass the legislature, a strange quality steals into the atmosphere, just as there does in the council chamber in Chicago when anything is to be pulled off—don't you know? There is a forebodement, an apprehensiveness, that electrifies the nerves and oppresses the lungs. I felt it there that night. We had had a heavy fight to pass the bill in the first place, and now we had to override a veto! It's hard enough to get the seventy-seven votes that constitute a majority, with the people against you—*