It appears that whenever they have a ticklish question to discuss, they evade the law by calling it a meeting of a “committee.” I am in position to testify that the meeting of the “committee” was a meeting of exactly the same individuals as later constituted a meeting of the “board”; also I am in position to testify that they discussed exactly the same subject, because the anteroom in which I was invited to sit and wait was so near to the meeting-room, that I could hear the voices when they were raised, and I knew that they were discussing the subject of my proposed speech. I handed to the secretary of the board a formal request for a hearing, and then waited. At a quarter past ten, the secretary of the board came to the anteroom, which was occupied by myself and half a dozen newspaper reporters, and requested that we should go downstairs and wait, as it was not proper for us to be “listening in on the proceedings of the board.” Naturally I was not gratified by this remark, as I had been sitting quietly in the chair which had been indicated to me as the proper chair for me to occupy, and I had not been told that it was my duty to stuff cotton into my ears. However, I went downstairs, and waited another half hour, and then I wrote another note, stating briefly that I protested against the board settling a question in secret meeting, when the law required that their proceedings should be public. After that I waited another hour, and then the secretary informed me that the meeting of the board of regents was now about to begin, and that the “public” was welcome to enter. I entered the room where the ladies and gentlemen of the board had been violating the law of their state for an hour and three-quarters, and I was informed that the board would be pleased to give me ten minutes in which to present my case. I have made it my practice to use most careful courtesy in dealing with my enemies, so as to put them in the wrong. I dutifully rehearsed to the regents my qualifications as a university orator, after which the board proceeded to question me, the two active questioners being Mr. Butler, the railroad attorney, and Dr. Seaman, the reactionary candidate for governor. The latter wanted to know if I had been correctly quoted in the newspaper interview, in which I had charged that President Birge “had been influenced by money” in his decision against me.