The floor of the branch, which when empty was like the interior of an enormous barn, by half-past eight was black with men. Not only did they completely cover the floor in a dense, solidly-packed mass, but they perched themselves on the tops of the sorting-tables; they swarmed up the tall slim iron columns which support the roof, and clung there, thirty feet above those below. Others more venturesome, by the same means, found a resting-place on the higher ledges of the over-stretching girders, smothered in dust, their heads in contact with the shelving ceiling. Hundreds more had to content themselves with catching an occasional glimpse of the platform and its occupants through the tiers of empty pigeon-holes, rising from the middles of the sorting-tables into which the newspapers were sorted. For every one came to see as much as to hear. A very large number from distant districts had only heard of him, and wanted to see Booth. They wanted to see what kind of man it was whose audacity and whose organising resource had so far overcome official objections as to make this meeting possible, who had thus enabled them to beard the official lion in his very den. The rostrum on the platform was contrived of big square mail-baskets and some wooden boxes covered over with mail-bags, touched up with a piece of green baize in the middle; and by this there were sitting a few postmen and others. Some one rose to speak, but the tumultuous outbreak of applause kept him silent on his feet for fully a minute. This, then, was Booth; and eyes and ears were strained to better take his measurement, and to catch his words—a rather short, sturdy man, with a full head and somewhat Gladstonian features. He spoke for half-an-hour or more, and if at first there were any waverers in the crowd, there were none when he finished. They would have stormed the Treasury benches that very night. Other speakers followed, and emphasised the necessity of laying their plaint before Parliament; and in the end a provisional committee was elected to draw up the petition. The lines on which the petition to Parliament was to run were to ask for the appointment of a Select Committee to inquire into their grievances, and their claims for better pay and improved prospects of promotion, and the abolition of Sunday labour.