For two whole days the storm continued, till at last Mr. Broughton suggested that the debate should be conducted in sections; each party to have its own president, secretary, committee, and reporter of progress; each to sit apart from the others by means of screens, and that there should be a central committee-room, to receive the reports and tabulate them in order. This scheme was adopted, and something like order began to prevail. Anthony Baskelette, Esq., who had now arrived per the Gloire de Dijon, was pretty unanimously voted to the presidentship of the central committee, or section, the members of which were composed of representatives from every party. Screens were provided at no little expense, and the great hall was portioned out into thirty or forty pens, not unlike the high pews used of old in village churches.
Aymer was intensely interested and amused, as he stood at his peephole on the stage, from which he could see into every one of these pens, or pews, and watch the eagerness of the disputes going on between the actors in each.
The first great object the sections had in view was to reduce their claims to something like shape and order; for this purpose each section was numbered from 1 to 37, and was to deliver to the central section, Number 38, a report or summary of the general principles and facts upon which the members of the section based their claim. This summary of claim, as it was called, was to be short, succinct, and clear; and to be supported by minute extracts of evidence, by the vouchers of the separate individuals, so to say, showing that the summary was correct.
These extracts of evidence attached to the summary were really not extracts, but full copies, and had to contain the dates, names, method of identification, and references to church registers, tombstones, family Bibles, and so forth.
Aymer was astounded at the magnitude of these volumes of evidence—for such, in fact, they were. He had an opportunity of just glancing at them, as they were laid upon the table of the central section one after another. The summaries were reasonable and tolerably well expressed. The minutes of evidence were something overwhelming. A section would send up in the course of a day—first, its summary and a pile of folios—seventy or eighty large lawyer’s folios of evidence to be attached to it. On the morrow it would beg for permission to add to its evidence, and towards the afternoon up would come another huge bundle of closely-written manuscript.
This would go on for several days, till the central committee at last issued an order to receive no more evidence from section Number—.
Then section Number—would hold an indignation meeting and protest, till the central committee was obliged to receive additional bundles of so-called evidence. Half of this evidence was nothing better than personal recollection.
The method pursued in the sections was delightfully simple and gratifying to every member’s vanity. He was supplied with pen and ink, and told to put down all he could recollect about his family. The result was that in each section there were five or six people—and in some more—all busily at work, writing autobiographies; and as everybody considered himself of quite as much consequence as his neighbour, the bulk of these autobiographies can easily be imagined.
If anyone had taken the trouble to wade through these personal histories, he would have been highly gratified with the fertility of the United States in breeding truly benevolent, upright, and distinguished men!
Out of all that one hundred and fifty there was not one who did not merit the gratitude of his township at least, and some were fully worthy of the President’s chair at the White House. Their labours for the good of others were most carefully recorded—the subscriptions they had made to local charities far away on the other side of the Atlantic, to schoolhouses, and chapels, town-halls, and whatnot.
“There,” ran many a proud record—“you will see my initials upon the cornerstone—‘J. I. B.,’ for ‘Jonathan Ithuriel Baskette,’ and the date (186‒), which is in itself good evidence towards my case.”
All this mass of rubbish had to be sifted by the central committee, to be docketed, indexed, arranged, and a general analysis made of it.
They worked for a while without a murmur, and suddenly collapsed. It was impossible to meet the flood of writing. Fancy one hundred and fifty people writing their autobiographies all at once, and each determined to do himself justice! Such a spectacle was never witnessed since the world began, and was worthy of the nineteenth century. The central committee flung up their hands in despair. A resource was presently found in the printing-press.
When once the idea was started, the cry spread to all corners of the hall, and rose in a volume of sound to be echoed from the roof. The Press! The Spirit evoked by Faust which he could not control, nor any who have followed him.
It was unanimously decided that everything should be printed—sectional summaries, minutes of evidence, central committees analysis, solicitors arguments,
