accept our thanks, O Lord!"

In cheery tones the great orator at once replied, "Knott, you
are the only man on earth who could have thought of such a story
just at the opportune moment." The temporary depression vanished;
Lamar was himself again, and was at once the brilliant conversationalist
of the delighted assemblage.

The surviving members of that Congress will recall a little chair that
daily rolled down the aisle to the front to the Speaker's desk.
It contained the emaciated form of a man whose weight at his best was
but ninety pounds--Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, "whose little
body lodged a mighty mind." No one who saw Mr. Stephens could ever
forget him. He looked as though he had just stepped out from
an old picture, or dropped down from the long-ago. There was
probably as little about him "of the earth, earthy" as of any mortal
this world has known. Upon his weak frame time had done its work,
and, true it is, "the surest poison is time." And yet, his feeble
piping voice--now scarcely heard an arm's length away--was potent in
the contentions of the great hall when he was the honored associate of
men whose public service reached back to the formation of the Government.
In the old hall near by--now the Valhalla of the nation--he had
sat with John Quincy Adams and contemporaries whose names at
once recall the Revolutionary period. After serving as Vice-President
of the Confederacy, whose rise and fall he had witnessed, Mr.
Stephens, with the shadows falling about him, was, by unanimous
voice of his people, again, in his own words, "in our father's
house." His apartments in the old National Hotel, as he never
failed to explain to his visitors, were those long ago occupied by
his political idol, Henry Clay. His couch stood in the exact spot
where Mr. Clay had died; and he no doubt thought--possibly wished--
that his own end might come just where that great Commoner had
breathed his last. This, however, was not to be. His last hours were
spent at the capital of his native commonwealth, which had, with
scarce a dissenting voice, just honored itself by electing him
to its chief executive office.

The Hon. Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania, was the successor
of the lamented Kerr as Speaker of the House. As such he presided
during the last session of the forty-fourth Congress, and during
the two Congresses immediately succeeding. He had long been a
member, coming in with Blaine and Garfield just