CHAPTER VI.
JIMMIE HIGGINS GOES TO JAIL
I.
Every evening now the party held its “soap-box” meetings on a corner just off Main Street. Jimmie, having volunteered as one of the assistants, would bolt his supper in the evening and hurry off to the spot. He was not one of the speakers, of course—he would have been terrified at the idea of making a speech; but he was one of those whose labours made the speaking possible, and who reaped the harvest for the movement.
The apparatus of the meeting was kept in the shop of a friendly carpenter near-by. The carpenter had made a “soap-box” that was a wonder—a platform mounted upon four slender legs, detachable, so that one man could carry the whole business and set it up. Thus the speaker was lifted a couple of feet above the heads of the crowd, an
