Even a sober person does not like to have a human
being emptied on him when he is not going any harm;
a person who is not sober cannot endure such an attention
at all. The nest of Sons of Liberty that Driscoll
landed in had not a sober bird in it; in fact there
was probably not an entirely sober one in the auditorium.
Driscoll was promptly and indignantly flung on the
heads of Sons in the next row, and these Sons passed
him on toward the rear, and then immediately began
to pummel the front row Sons who had passed him to
them. This course was strictly followed by bench
after bench as Driscoll traveled in his tumultuous
and airy flight toward the door; so he left behind
him an ever-lengthening wake of raging and plunging
and fighting and swearing humanity. Down went
group after group of torches, and presently above the
deafening clatter of the gavel, roar of angry voices,
and crash of succumbing benches, rose the paralyzing
cry of “fire!”
The fighting ceased instantly; the cursing ceased;
for one distinctly defined moment, there was a dead
hush, a motionless calm, where the tempest had been;
then with one impulse the multitude awoke to life and
energy again, and went surging and struggling and swaying,
this way and that, its outer edges melting away through
windows and doors and gradually lessening the pressure
and relieving the mass.
The fireboys were never on hand so suddenly before;
for there was no distance to go this time, their quarters
being in the rear end of the market house, There was
an engine company and a hook-and-ladder company.
Half of each was composed of rummies and the other
half of anti-rummies, after the moral and political
share-and-share-alike fashion of the frontier town
of the period. Enough anti-rummies were loafing
in quarters to man the engine and the ladders.
In two minutes they had their red shirts and helmets
on—they never stirred officially in unofficial
costume—and as the mass meeting overhead
smashed through the long row of windows and poured
out upon the roof of the arcade, the deliverers were
ready for them with a powerful stream of water, which
washed some of them off the roof and nearly drowned
the rest. But water was preferable to fire, and
still the stampede from the windows continued, and
still the pitiless drenching assailed it until the
building was empty; then the fireboys mounted to the
hall and flooded it with water enough to annihilate
forty times as much fire as there was there; for a
village fire company does not often get a chance to
show off, and so when it does get a chance, it makes
the most of it. Such citizens of that village
as were of a thoughtful and judicious temperament
did not insure against fire; they insured against
the fire company.
CHAPTER 12 — The Shame of Judge Driscoll
Copyrights
The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
