important
measure, or a vote taken on a bill granting special privileges. In the
latter case, his vote, as I noticed, was generally cast on the
affirmative side. Several times I saw him staggering on the Avenue, and
once brought into the House for the purpose of voting, in so drunken a
state, that he had to be supported to his seat. And even worse than
this--when his name was called, he was asleep, and had to be shaken
several times before he was sufficiently aroused to give his vote!

Happily, for the good of his country, it was his last winter in
Washington. At the next session, a better man took his place.

Two years from the period of my last visit to Cedarville, I found
myself approaching that quiet village again. As the church-spire came
in view, and house after house became visible, here and there, standing
out in pleasant relief against the green background of woods and
fields, all the exciting events which rendered my last visit so
memorable, came up fresh in my mind. I was yet thinking of Willy
Hammond's dreadful death, and of his broken-hearted mother, whose life
went out with his, when the stage rolled by their old homestead. Oh,
what a change was here! Neglect, decay, and dilapidation were visible,
let the eye fall where it would. The fences were down, here and there;
the hedges, once so green and nicely trimmed, had grown rankly in some
places, but were stunted and dying in others; all the beautiful walks
were weedy and grass-grown, and the box-borders dead; the garden,
rainbow-hued in its wealth of choice and beautiful flowers when I first
saw it, was lying waste,--a rooting-ground for hogs. A glance at the
house showed a broken chimney, the bricks unremoved from the spot where
they struck the ground; a moss grown roof, with a large limb from a
lightning-rent tree lying almost balanced over the eaves, and
threatening to fall at the touch of the first wind-storm that swept
over. Half of the vines that clambered about the portico were dead, and
the rest, untrained, twined themselves in wild disorder, or fell
groveling to the earth. One of the pillars of the portico was broken,
as were, also, two of the steps that went up to it. The windows of the
house were closed, but the door stood open, and, as the stage went
past, my eyes rested, for a moment, upon an old man seated in the hall.
He was not near enough to the door for me to get a view of his face;
but the white flowing hair left me in no doubt as to his