At this point Wade Ruggles sprang to his feet, with the fierce question:
“Does the gentleman refer to me?”
His hand was at his hip on the butt of his revolver and matters looked squally, but the tactful Budge quelled the rising storm with Chesterfieldian grace. Waving his hand and bowing, he said:
“I did not intend the remotest reference to you.”
Vose Adams came up promptly.
“Then it’s me and I’m ready to make any man eat his words.”
“My good friend is mistaken; nothing could induce me to apply such a term to him; I hold him in too high esteem.”
Since this left Ike Hoe as the only remaining member, he began to show signs of explosion, perceiving which the incomprehensible Budge proceeded to mollify him.
“And Ike knows that I would be the last person in the world to slur a gentleman from whom I as well as the others have received so much instruction.”
Ike was mystified. He looked at the other members of the committee and then into the faces of the group. He couldn’t make it out.
“If it’s all the same, Mr. Chairman, since the gentleman has said there was too many fools on the committee, and has just explained that he didn’t mean any one of us three, I’ll be obliged if he’ll explain who in thunder he did mean.”
This sounded unanswerable, but the cunning Budge was equal to the occasion.
“It gives me pleasure to answer the question of the gentleman: my remark was made in a Pickwickian sense.”
He leaned forward with a beaming smile, as if his explanation left nothing to be added. No one understood to what he referred, but all were too proud to admit the fact. There was a general nodding of heads, and Ike, with the manner of a man who magnanimously accepts the humble apology of him whom he has worsted, leaned back on his stool and audibly remarked:
“That makes it all right.”
Budge Isham resumed his seat, when he was reminded that he was expected to submit a name for the new settlement.
“I beg pardon,” he said, rising again, “it is a fact known to this highly intelligent assemblage, that every city of prominence in Europe has from one to forty namesakes in this country. There is one exception, however; doubtless all know to what city I refer.”
In response to his inquiring looks, the group tried to appear as if the name was familiar to them, but no one spoke.
“It is hardly necessary for me to mention the city, but I may say it is Constantinople.”
A contemptuous sniff greeted this proposal.
“That’s the worst yet,” said Wade Ruggles, drawing a match along the thigh of his trousers to relight his pipe, which had gone out during the excitement; “the man that insults this party with such a proposition, ought to be run out of the place.”
“What’s the matter with it?” demanded Budge.
“It’s too long in the fust place,” commented Ike Hoe; “it bothers a man to git his mouth around it and it hain’t any music, like the other names such as Starvation Kenyon, Hangman’s Noose, Blizzard Gorge and the rest. I stick to mine as the purtiest of all.”
“What’s that?”
“‘Blazes,’ short and sweet and innercent like.”
Landlord Ortigies was leaning with both elbows on the bar. The new name struck him favorably.
“I’m inclined to agree with Budge,” he said, “cause there hain’t any other place that’s hit onto it. All of them names that you chaps have tried to spring onto us, have been used in other places, or at least some part of the names, but, as Budge has observed, no galoot has scooped ‘Constantinople.’”
“’Cause no one ain’t fool enough,” observed Ike Hoe, who noted the drift of the sentiment.
“But they’ll pounce onto it powerful quick if we don’t grab it while it’s passin’; it’s a good long name, and what if it does make a chap sling the muscles of his jaw to warble it? All the better; it’ll make him think well of his town, which I prophesy is going to be the emporium of the West.”
“Let’s see,” growled Wade Ruggles, “Constantinople is in Ireland isn’t it?”
“Where’s your eddycation?” sneered Ike Vose; “it’s the oldest town in Wales.”
Landlord Ortigies raised his head and filled the room with his genial laughter.
“If there was anything I was strong on when I led my class at the Squankum High School it was astronermy; I was never catched in locating places.”
“If you know so much,” remarked Ruggles, “you’ll let us know something ’bout that town which I scorn to name.”
“I’m allers ready to enlighten ign’rance, though I’ve never visited Constantinople, which stands on the top of the Himalaya Mountains, in the southern part of Iceland.”
“That’s very good,” said Budge Isham, who with his usual tact maneuvered to keep the ally he had gained, “but the Constantinople I have in mind is in Turkey, which is such a goodly sized country that it straddles from Europe to Asia.”
“Which the same I suppose means to imply that this ere Constantinople will do likewise similar.”
“No doubt that’s what it’ll do in time,” assented the landlord.
“I beg to offer an amendment to my own motion,” continued the oily Budge; “when the boom strikes this town, as it is bound soon to do, and it rivals in size the famous city on the other side of the Atlantic, there should be something to distinguish the two. We have no wish to rob any other place of the honors it has taken centuries to gain; so, while we reserve the principal name, I propose that we distinguish it from the old city by prefixing the word ‘New.’”
“You mean that this town shall be ‘New Constantinople?’” was the inquiring remark of the landlord.
“Precisely; and I now make the motion that that be our name.”
There were seventeen persons present and it looked as if a decision was inevitable. The landlord was shrewd. His first act was to invite all to drink at his expense, after which he made each pledge himself to abide by the decision, whatever it might be. These preliminaries being arranged, a show of hands was called for. The vote was eight for and eight against the new name.
“That’s a tie,” commented the landlord from behind his immense beard; “and therefore the question ain’t settled.”
“It’s easy ’nough to settle it,” said Ike Hoe.
“How?”
“Take another vote.”
“I don’t see how that’ll do it, onless some one changes his mind; but again, gentlemen: all who favor the new name, raise their right hands.”
Eight horny palms were elevated in air, while the same number were displayed in the negative. The landlord looked troubled.
“We must keep it up till some one weakens,” observed Wade Ruggles.
The host scanned the earnest faces in front of him.
“Which of you gentlemen will promise to weaken if we keep this thing up for half the night?”
“I’ll stay here a week,” was the reply of Vose Adams, while the general nodding of heads showed that he echoed the sentiments of the others. The landlord met the crisis with becoming dignity.
“Gentlemen, when I was a member of Congress, all questions that was tied was settled by the presiding officer casting the deciding vote, and which as aforesaid we don’t lay any claim to being higher than Congress, I therefore, by virtue of the aforesaid right vested in me, cast my vote in favor of this city being called New Constantinople,