But here there was an interruption of a kind never before witnessed during any proceedings of the Lumen Society. It came from neither of the debaters, who still remained standing at their desks until the vote settling their comparative merits in argument should be taken. The interruption was from the rear row of seats along the wall, where sat new members of the society, freshmen not upon the program for the evening. A loud voice was heard from this quarter, a loud but nasal voice, shrill as well as nasal, and full of a strange hot passion. “Mr. Chairman!” it cried. “Look-a-here, Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman, I demand to be heard! You gotta gimme my say, Mr. Chairman! I'm a-gunna have my _say_! You look-a-here, Mr. Chairman!” Shocked by such a breach of order, and by the unseemly violence of the speaker, not only the chairman but everyone else looked there. A short, strong figure was on its feet, gesticulating fiercely; and the head belonging to it was a large one with too much curly black hair, a flat, swarthy face, shiny and not immaculately shaven; there was an impression of ill-chosen clothes, too much fat red lip, too much tooth, too much eyeball. Fred Mitchell, half-sorrowing, yet struggling to conceal tears of choked mirth over his roommate's late exhibition, recognized this violent interrupter as one Linski, a fellow freshman who sat next to him in one of his classes. “What's _that_ cuss up to?” Fred wondered, and so did others. Linski showed them. He pressed forward, shoving himself through the two rows in front of him till he emerged upon the green carpet of the open space, and as he came, he was cyclonic with words. “You don't put no such stuff as this over, I tell you!” he shouted in his hot, nasal voice. “This here's a free country, and you call yourself a debating society, do you? Lemme tell you _I_ belong to a debating society in Chicago, where I come from, and them fellas up there, they'd think they'd oughta be shot fer a fake like what you people are tryin' to put over, here, to-night. I come down here to git some more education, and pay fer it, too, in good hard money I've made sweatin' in a machine shop up there in Chicago; but if _this_ is the kind of education I'm a-gunna git, I better go on back there. You call this a square debate, do you?”