Just the moment he had done it, up sprang George Duff,--you know the
keen competition there is, as a straight matter of business, between
the banks in Mariposa,--up sprang George Duff, I say, and wrote out a
cheque for another hundred conditional on the fund reaching seventy
thousand. You never heard such cheering in your life.

And then when Netley walked up to the head of the table and laid down
a cheque for a hundred dollars conditional on the fund reaching one
hundred thousand the room was in an uproar. A hundred thousand
dollars! Just think of it! The figures fairly stagger one. To think
of a hundred thousand dollars raised in five minutes in a little
place like Mariposa!

And even that was nothing! In less than no time there was such a
crowd round Mullins trying to borrow his pen all at once that his
waistcoat was all stained with ink. Finally when they got order at
last, and Mullins stood up and announced that the conditional fund
had reached a quarter of a million, the whole place was a perfect
babel of cheering. Oh, these Whirlwind Campaigns are wonderful
things!


I can tell you the Committee felt pretty proud that first day. There
was Henry Mullins looking a little bit flushed and excited, with his
white waistcoat and an American Beauty rose, and with ink marks all
over him from the cheque signing; and he kept telling them that he'd
known all along that all that was needed was to get the thing started
and telling again about what he'd seen at the University Campaign and
about the professors crying, and wondering if the high school
teachers would come down for the last day of the meetings.