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the way was addressing the committee, and the usual hour for refreshment had passed. I preferred the arguments of the stomach to the arguments of that gentleman, and so I went home."

Admitted to his seat on payment of fees.

Tennessee lagging also? What is it that Tennessee says growlingly? "I left the hall at ten o'clock, and, in accordance with the custom of all orderly men, went to bed. I have no favors to ask of this House, and particularly in the condition in which I find some of its members."

Admitted to his seat on payment of fees.

Old Kentucky on the missing list too? Perhaps a major general that was to be? What does he say? "I sat in this House for ten hours, and was tired, hungry, and sleepy. I believed it would be a night of speech-making and not of business, and, as I have generally been an attentive listener to speeches, I concluded I had done my share of that part of legislative duty, and, therefore, at ten o'clock I paired off with a friend."

Admitted to his seat on payment of fees.

Who saw him pass

But see, who is that? The gentleman from Alabama, numbered now with the pale congregation. How came he here? He was absent when his name was called. over the projecting top of the entablature which runs round the Capitol, from whose dangerous height the slightest misstep might have precipitated him to the massive pavement below, dashing him to atoms, and enter the hall by the window at the back of the speaker's chair? No matter; there he is! The clerk can not, for his life, present him as an absentee.

That dark object in yonder corner, seen, perhaps, but by a single eye-what is it? Can it be a member descending from the gallery down the side of the granite pillar? Surely, surely. His name was on the list of absentees; but what right now has it there? The doors are barred. The member is in his seat. Record him absent at your peril, Mr. Clerk !

And so, the night is past. "The morn, in russet mantle clad, walks o'er the dew of yonder eastern hill." Daylight looks upon faces pale with watching, and sleepless eyes that scarce take note of its approach. What have the public interests gained? Nothing. What public measure has been con

summated? None. A motion is made that the House adjourn. Some feeble voice, almost choked in its own utterance, demands the yeas and nays, which have been called, during the night, a dozen times. But there are few or none to back him. The speaker puts the question, and members, whose lungs, but a moment before, seemed to have lost their functions forever, once more take heart, and give a responsive "ay," which tells how welcome their "mittimus" will be. But it is not unanimous. No; here and there a broken voice, like stray shots from muskets that have missed time in a feu de joie, gives out a querulous "no," as if merely from the love of a negative. In fact, it is a matter worthy of remark, that, except in cases of death, we have never seen the House adjourn by a unanimous vote. No matter how late or how early-with business before it or without business before it—be it night or be it day-Saturday evening or Sunday morning, some one or more members will surely answer "no." We have frequently communed with ourselves on this strange manifestation of the human mind, but without dispelling its mystery. The nearest approach to a solution that we could arrive at has been, that two or three men did not wish a certain thing simply because two hundred did wish it; and that, upon the same inexplicable principle of human conduct, if the two hundred had voted not to adjourn, the two or three would have insisted upon adjourning.

However that may be, the speaker announces, in a tone of ill-suppressed gratulation, that the motion has been decided in the affirmative. The Call of the House has no more vitality left. The doors of the hall are open, and the House adjourns.

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to the station; and in the year 1842, the Legislature elected him President of the Court of Appeals by a unanimous vote

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