Then in the other teams there were the doctors and the newspaper men and the professional men like Judge Pepperleigh and Yodel the auctioneer.
It was all organized so that every team had its headquarters, two of them in each of the three hotels--one upstairs and one down.And it was arranged that there would be a big lunch every day, to be held in Smith's caff, round the corner of Smith's Northern Health Resort and Home of the Wissanotti Angler,--you know the place.The lunch was divided up into tables, with a captain for each table to see about things to drink, and of course all the tables were in competition with one another.In fact the competition was the very life of the whole thing.
It's just wonderful how these things run when they're organized.Take the first luncheon, for example.There they all were, every man in his place, every captain at his post at the top of the table.It was hard, perhaps, for some of them to get there.They had very likely to be in their stores and banks and offices till the last minute and then make a dash for it.It was the cleanest piece of team work you ever saw.
You have noticed already, I am sure, that a good many of the captains and committee men didn't belong to the Church of England Church.
Glover, for instance, was a Presbyterian, till they ran the picket fence of the manse two feet on to his property, and after that he became a free-thinker.But in Mariposa, as I have said, everybody likes to be in everything and naturally a Whirlwind Campaign was a novelty.Anyway it would have been a poor business to keep a man out of the lunches merely on account of his religion.I trust that the day for that kind of religious bigotry is past.
Of course the excitement was when Henry Mullins at the head of the table began reading out the telegrams and letters and messages.First of all there was a telegram of good wishes from the Anglican Lord Bishop of the Diocese to Henry Mullins and calling him Dear Brother in Grace the Mariposa telegraph office is a little unreliable and it read: "Dear Brother in grease," but that was good enough.The Bishop said that his most earnest wishes were with them.
Then Mullins read a letter from the Mayor of Mariposa Pete Glover was mayor that year--stating that his keenest desires were with them: and then one from the Carriage Company saying that its heartiest good will was all theirs; and then one from the Meat Works saying that its nearest thoughts were next to them.Then he read one from himself, as head of the Exchange Bank, you understand, informing him that he had heard of his project and assuring him of his liveliest interest in what he proposed.
At each of these telegrams and messages there was round after round of applause, so that you could hardly hear yourself speak or give an order.But that was nothing to when Mullins got up again, and beat on the table for silence and made one of those crackling speeches--just the way business men speak--the kind of speech that a college man simply can't make.I wish I could repeat it all.I remember that it began: "Now boys, you know what we're here for, gentlemen," and it went on just as good as that all through.When Mullins had done he took out a fountain pen and wrote out a cheque for a hundred dollars, conditional on the fund reaching fifty thousand.And there was a burst of cheers all over the room.
Just the moment he had done it, up sprang George Duff,--you know the keen competition there is, as a straight matter of business, between the banks in Mariposa,--up sprang George Duff, I say, and wrote out a cheque for another hundred conditional on the fund reaching seventy thousand.You never heard such cheering in your life.
And then when Netley walked up to the head of the table and laid down a cheque for a hundred dollars conditional on the fund reaching one hundred thousand the room was in an uproar.A hundred thousand dollars! Just think of it! The figures fairly stagger one.To think of a hundred thousand dollars raised in five minutes in a little place like Mariposa!
And even that was nothing! In less than no time there was such a crowd round Mullins trying to borrow his pen all at once that his waistcoat was all stained with ink.Finally when they got order at last, and Mullins stood up and announced that the conditional fund had reached a quarter of a million, the whole place was a perfect babel of cheering.Oh, these Whirlwind Campaigns are wonderful things!
