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of the attendants and began whispering to the lad (I believe to fetch his snuff-box). Fooled to the top of my bent,' I 'checked in mid volley,' and said: The rules of this House, sir, require, and properly require, every member when he speaks to address himself respectfully to Mr. Speaker; to that rule, which would seem to imply a correlative duty of respectful attention on the part of the Chair, I always adhere; never seeking for attention in the countenances of the members, much less of the spectators and auditors in the lobby or the gallery: as, however, I find the Chair resolutely bent on not attending to me, I shall take my seat:' which I did accordingly. The chastisement was so deserved, so studiously provoked, that it was not in my nature to forego inflicting it. Like Worcester's rebellion, it lay in my way and I found it.'

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"He replied in a subdued tone of voice, and with a manner quite changed from his usual petulance and arrogance (for it is generally one or t'other, sometimes both), ' that he had paid all possible attention,' &c., which was not true, in fact: for from the time that I entered upon the subject of his conduct in relation to the bank in 1811 (renewal of old charter), and in 1816 (the new bank), and on internal improvements, &c. (quoting his words in his last speech, that 'this was a limited, cautiously restricted government'), and held up the Compromise' in its true colors, he never once glanced his eye upon me but to withdraw it, as if he had seen a basilisk.

"Some of the pretenders to the throne, if not the present incumbent, will hold me from that day forth in cherished remembrance. I have not yet done, however, with the pope or the pretenders, their name is legion.

"My dear friend, I have been up since three o'clock; as soon as I could see to write I began this letter, if it deserve the name of one. I have received my death-wound on Tuesday, the 1st, and Wednesday, the 2d of February. Had I not spoken on the last of these days, I might have weathered this point and clawed off of death's lee shore. My disease is assuming a hectic type. I believe the lungs are affected symptomatically, through sympathy with the liver, at least I hope so. Yet why hope when the vulture daily whets his beak for a repast upon my ever-growing liver, and his talons are fixed in my very vitals? I am done with public life, as soon as the business of Congress will permit me to leave it; at any rate, immediately after the adjournment I shall travel-perhaps take a sea voyage, not to get rid of duns (although the wolf will be at my door in the shape of the man I bought that land of), but to take the only chance of prolonging a life, that I trust is now not altogether useless.

Remember me kindly to all friends; respectfully to Mr. Roane. Tell him that I have fulfilled his injunction, and I trust proved myself a zealous, and consistent, and (I wish I could add) able

defender of State Rights.' I have yet to settle with the Supreme Court

"I am hurt-a plague of both the Houses-I am sped! 'Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but 'twill serve ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man.'”

The foregoing, and other letters that followed close upon it in quick succession, show the diseased condition of body, and the excited and feverish state of mind under which Mr. Randolph was laboring at this time.

Thursday morning, 5 o'clock, Feb. 24, 1820. "I have been up since half past three. My sensations are indescribable. The night before last I had a return of the spasms. At present I am free from pain; but what I feel is worse than pain, unless in its most acute form, and even then I think I could better bear it. Whatever it be, something is passing in the nobler viscera of no ordinary character. They have got a Missouri question there, that threatens a divulsion of soul from body. Nausea in its worst form (sea sickness) is not equal to what I feel. I have it slightly, accompanied with a sinking of the spirits, a soul-sickness, a sensation as if I should swoon away instantly; meantime, diarrhoea is not idle, from twenty to fifty calls in the four and twenty hours. Every thing I eat (only milk and crackers, heated over again in the oven) passes unchanged. So did gruel when I took some well boiled and gelatinous.

"You will not see my name on the yeas and nays yesterday on the Senate's bill. I could not remain in the house, the air of which is unchanged for weeks. It smells like a badly kept comodité, (shouldn't there be two m's in that word ?) and even worse, for you have in addition to ordure and urine all the exhalations that overpowered Matt. Bramble at a fashionable squeeze, and stale tobacco smoke into the bargain; cigars are smoked in the ante-room. The avenues to our hall are narrow, mean, dark and dangerous, and when you pass the first portal, you are assailed by a compound of villanous smells, which is only a little more diluted when you emerge into light, or rather darkness visible through cross lights that torture the eye.

"My faithful Juba is sick, very sick, and four nights ago I heard him in his sleep cry out I wish I and master was at home.' These Yankees have almost reconciled me to negro slavery. They have produced a revulsion even on my mind, what then must the effect be on those who had no scruples on the subject. I am persuaded that the cause of humanity to these unfortunates has been put back a century, certainly a generation, by the unprincipled conduct of ambitious men, availing themselves of a good as well as of a fanatical spirit in the nation.

"Tell Mrs. Brockenbrough that Mr. Meade makes anxious inqui

ries about the stato of her mind on the subject of religious opinions. He and Frank Key are with us on the question. Frank has just returned from Frederick, where he was summoned a fortnight ago to attend a (supposed) dying father. The old gentleman is recovering slowly. What must it have been to have his bedside attended by such a son! He is indeed as near perfection as our poor nature can go, although he would be shocked to hear it said. Severe to himself, considerate and indulgent to others, speaking ill of none. Day is breaking; good morning."

"J. R. of R. to J. B., a letter, like Mrs. Rowe's, from the dead to the living.

Saturday, Feb. 26, 1820.

"Hear all ye nations! Last evening the late J. R. of R. who is 'stone dead (the major) precisely', went to Mrs. Fh's 'consort' said dead man being like any other great personage deceased, tired of toujours perdrix.' (N. B.: the plural of this French nounsubstantive is perdros, according to Mr. Speaker Clay, who has been to Paris, aye, and to Ghent too; and ought surely to know.) Why shouldn't dead men enjoy a little variety as well as folks that talk in their sleep in Congress?-and there were 'lots of them' there — (see Tom Crib). The French lady proved to be a noun-adjective, as old Lilly hath it, she could not stand by herself' (or would not) for after some execrable airs, at the beginning of the third (not the third by at least thirty-it is Dogberry who, after sixthly and lastly' brings in thirdly') she enacted something like a fit, and threw herself into the arms of a gentleman (not a false concord I hope-I trust it was her husband), whereupon the 'dead man' not the 'master of the rolls' (he deals only in crackers) 'opened wide his mouth' and called a coach and threw himself into it and drove home, not sham-sick. I was heartily glad of our early dismission, and after an almost sleepless night, me voici, at my daily occupation, by daybreak, boring you.

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"I learn from a very direct source, that this lady was an obscure girl, whom Mrs. B-ll 'patronized' and placed at Mad. Rivaldi's boarding-school; where the protegée was shown off to the glory of patroness, and sung at Mad. R's concerts and married one of the teachers, and in short, has been used to exhibition and display from the egg-shell. I felt very much ashamed of being there, not because the room was mean and badly lighted, and dirty, and the company ill dressed, but because I saw, for the first time, an American woman singing for hire. I would import our actors, singers, tumblers and jack-puddings, if we must have such cattle, from Europe. Hyde de Neuville, a Frenchman, agreed with me, 'that although the lady was universally admitted to be very amiable, it was a dangerous example.' At first (on dit) she was unaffected and sang natu

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rally, and, I am told, agreeably enough, but now she is a bundle of 'affectations' (as Sir Hugh hath it), and reminds me of the little screech 'owels as they say on 'the south side.' Her voice is not bad, but she is utterly destitute of a single particle of taste or judgment. Were she a lady and I in her company, my politeness should never induce me to punish myself by asking her to sing.

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"A member from Virginia, whose avoirdupois entitles him to weight, as well as his being a sort of commis to the P., told me yesterday, that the tale in circulation of the P. having written a letter to Mr. Roane, declaring his disapprobation of the compromise, was an idle scandal, for that he had seen the letter (or rather that it had been read to him) and there was no such sentiment expressed in it.' Hem! Pretty good! Don't you think so?

"When Mrs. F. was 'screeching,' I was strongly reminded of two lines of a mock Methodist hymn, that poor John Hollingsworth used to sing, when we were graceless youths at college

"O! that I, like Madame French,
Could raise my vice' on high,

Thy name should last like oaken bench,
To parpetui-ty.'

"The same 'two single gentlemen rolled into one,' told me that Me expressed a desire to maintain the relations of peace and amity and social intercourse, with me; that he did not stand upon etiquette; did not require any gentleman to pay him the respect of a call in the first instance; gave examples to that effect, some of which I know to be true (N. B. election coming on), and that he should have sent his invitations to me as well as to the rest, but that he thought they would not be acceptable-that I had repelled, &c., &c., &c.

"Whereupon I said that I had not seen said great man but once (Friday, the 11th, riding by, after Mr. King's speech in the Senate) since the Georgetown sheep-shearing, in the spring of 1812. That I had called more than once that spring, on him and Madame, and not at home was the invariable reply; that he had invited Garnett, as it were out of my own apartment that year, to dine with General Moreau, Lewis and Stanford, the only M. C.'s that lodged there besides myself, and omitted to ask me, who had a great desire to see Moreau; that I lacqueyed the heels of no great man; that I had a very good dinner at home, which I could not eat, although served at an hour that I was used to; and that I was very well, as I was, &c. Hodijah Meade writes Archer that I am becoming popular, even in Amelia. Perhaps the great man has heard something to this effect.

"Write me volumes-all your news, chat, &c. Yesterday we 'settled the chat.' not by the rules of the Finish' (see Tom Crib), but of the House of Commons, actually coughing, and scraping, and 'question' questioning some brave fellows that made a stout resistance to

be heard, but were outnumbered. I was not party to the outrage'did not cough nor cry, but I heard the speaker's voice above the rest. G. T. spoke the last-promised us novelty at least, borrowed largely from Pinkney, P. Barbour, and your humble servant, during three quarters of an hour that I listened to him, when I left him, I believe, without a single auditor except Mr. Chairman C-b! as very a 'Johnny Raw' as ever entered a ring. See again my standard authority, Tom Crib."

CHAPTER XIV.

"I NOW GO FOR BLOOD"-MADNESS.

IMMEDIATELY on the settlement of that exciting subject-the Missouri question-followed the death of Commodore Decatur, who fell in a duel the 20th March, 1820, with Commodore Barron. This sad event produced a shock throughout the community. The gallant seaman lived in the hearts of his countrymen. His untimely end shrouded the country in mourning. The occasion, the manner, and the place-not on the proud deck, in face of the enemies of his country, added poignancy to their grief. None felt more deeply on the occasion than John Randolph. They were friends, and they were kindred spirits. To lose so noble a soul from among the few whose love he cherished, under such painful circumstances, and at a time when the country could illy spare so gallant a heart, was more than his weak frame could endure. Worn out with excessive watching and anxiety on the momentous question which had well nigh torn the Union asunder, emaciated with disease bodily and mental, that for years had known no intermission, with the keen sensibility of a woman, delicate as a sensitive plant, this last calamity proved too rude an assault on the nicely balanced, mysteriously wrought machinery of mind, which went whirling and dashing in mad disorder, and defying for a time the controlling influence of the master's will.

His conduct on the occasion of the funeral of Commodore Decatur is said to have been very extravagant. The cold and heartless world, that is unconscious of any thing else but a selfish motive, and the igno

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