with the oppressed everywhere on
God's footstool. Irishmen, in common with liberty-loving men
everywhere, looked with abhorrence upon the attempt of a great
European power to establish monarchy upon the ruins of republics.

May we not confidently abide in the hope that brighter days are in
waiting for the beautiful island and her gallant people? I close with
the words: "God bless old Ireland!"

XXXIII
THE BLIND CHAPLAIN

DR. MILBURN'S SOLEMNITY IN PRAYER--HIS VENERABLE APPEARANCE--HIS
CONVERSATIONAL POWERS--HIS CUSTOM OF PRAYING FOR SICK MEMBERS.

No Senator who ever sat under the ministrations of Dr. Milburn,
the blind chaplain, can ever forget his earnest and solemn invocation.
When rolling from his tongue, each word of the Lord's Prayer seemed
to weigh a pound. His venerable appearance and sightless eyes gave
a tinge of pathetic emphasis to his every utterance. He was a man
of rare gifts; in early life, before the entire failure of his
sight, he had known much of active service in his sacred calling
upon the Western circuits. He had been the fellow-laborer of
Cartwright, Bascom, and other eminent Methodist ministers of the
early times.

Dr. Milburn was the Chaplain of the House during the Mexican War, and
often a guest at the Executive Mansion when Mr. Polk was President.
He knew well many of the leading statesmen of that period. He
possessed rare conversational powers; and notwithstanding his
blindness, poverty, and utter loneliness, he remained the pleasing,
entertaining gentleman to the last.

It was the custom of the good Chaplain, with the aid of a faithful
monitor, to keep thoroughly advised as to the health of the senators
and their families. The bare mention, in the morning paper, of
any ill having befallen any statesman of whom he was, for the time,
the official spiritual shepherd, was the unfailing precursor of
special and affectionate mention at the next convening of the
Senate. Moreover, in the discharge of this sacred duty, his
invariable habit was to designate the object of his special invocation
as "the Senior Senator" or "Junior Senator," carefully giving
the name of his State. It is within the realm of probability that
since the first humble petition was breathed, there has never been
an apparently more prompt answer to prayer than that now to be
related.

_The Morning Post_ contained an item to the effect that Senator
Voorhees was ill. During the accustomed invocation which