“Mr. President,” he says, so nice and dignified. And when Silas had done his nod, Absalom went on in his soft, unstarched voice: “It’s a real nice idear,” he says, “to get up this here club. I for one feel real glad it’s going. You ain’t got up any line around it. Nobody has to be any one thing in order to get in on it. I’ve thought for a long time there’d ought to be some place where folks could go that didn’t believe alike, nor vote alike, nor get paid alike. I’m glad I come out--I guess we all are. Now the purpose of this here club, as I understand it, is to do nice things for folks. Well, I’ve got a nice thing to propose for us to do. I’ll pitch in and help, and I guess some of the rest of us will. Soon as it comes warm weather, we could get a-hold of that elegant galvanized iron swill-wagon that ain’t in use and drive it around the town to do what it’s for. Us that don’t have work so awful steady could do it, nice as a mice. I dunno whether that comes inside what the club was intended for, but it would be doing a kind of a nice thing for folks, my way of thinking.” Up hopped Eppleby Holcomb--Eppleby being one of those prophet men that can see faint signs sticking up their heads where there ain’t much of anything showing. “That’s the ticket, Mr. President,” says he. “Us that don’t have horses or chickens can sense that all right. If Absalom moves it, I second it.” “Will you help drive it around, Betts?” says Absalom. “Hank Haskitt? Ben Dole? We’re all of us home a good deal of the time--we could keep it goin’, amongst us. All right,” says he, when the men had nodded matter-of-course nods, “sure I make it a motion.” Silas put the motion, looking some dazed. And when it carried, hearty, us ladies sitting over by the refreshment table, and that had bought the wagon, we all burst out and spatted our hands. We couldn’t help it. And everybody kind of turned around and passed some remark--and it made a real nice minute. Then Silas spoke up from the chair kind of sour--being in the Council so, that wouldn’t run the wagon. “The thing’s in the city tool-house now,” says he, “and it’s a good deal in the way where it is. It had ought to be put somewheres.” Up pipes Ben Dole, kind of important and eager, and forgot to address the chair till he was half through, and then done so and ducked and flushed and went on anyhow. And the purport of his remarks was, that he could set that tank in the barn of his lot, that he didn’t have no horse for and no use of, and keep it there till spring. And I seconded what he meant, and it got itself carried, and Ben set down like he’d done a thing, same as he had done.