Page:The council of seven.djvu/251

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  • nor niceties of form, at all times he knew how to speak

man to man to the citizens.

At the Chairman's table, Sir Munt was a formidable proposition. He was very much a master man. And from the outset of the fight for Blackhampton East, the friends of Sir Stuyvescent Milgrim had to keep the fact ever before them.

"Seems to some on us, gentlemen," said Sir Munt, in the course of his opening remarks, at Mr. Endor's first meeting, "that our Colonial friend with the old Yorkshire name, who is so keen to help us over here, might do almost as well in Ottawa, trying to persuade the Land of Promise to give a square deal to people not so happily situated. Some on us in this hall, who helped to provide his country with the money that has done so much to make her the proposition she is to-day, have not forgotten her Government's dealings with the Grand Trunk Railway. Those of us in the city who happened to hold the stock have not forgotten how its proprietors were frozen out by penal legislation. I, for one, gentlemen, intend to keep that little episode in mind."

This was "some" beginning and when the Chairman went on in the racy style in which all public meetings delight, to give his opinion of the U. P. and the inevitable result of government by newspaper, the first fruits of which the country had already reaped, his words fell as seed on a prepared soil. John Endor's speech was in a different key. His platform manner