lment; but the great urgency and the abundant assurances of
support placed little less than actual compulsion upon him.
Accordingly on December 5 he rose to address the House. He was (p. 293)
greeted as a _Deus ex machina_. Not speaking to the clerk, but turning
directly to the assembled members, he began: "Fellow citizens! Members
elect of the twenty-sixth Congress!" He could not resist the temptation
of administering a brief but severe and righteous castigation to
Garland; and then, ignoring that functionary altogether, proceeded to
beg the House to _organize itself_. To this end he said that he would
offer a resolution "ordering the clerk to call the members from New
Jersey possessing the credentials from the Governor of that State."
There had been already no lack of resolutions, but the difficulty lay
in the clerk's obstinate refusal to put the question upon them. So now
the puzzled cry went up: "How shall the question be put?" "I intend to
put the question myself," said the dauntless old man, wholly equal to
the emergency. A tumult of applause resounded upon all sides. Rhett,
of South Carolina, sprang up and offered a resolution, that Williams,
of North Carolina, the oldest member of the House, be appointed
chairman of the meeting; but upon objection by Williams, he
substituted the name of Mr. Adams, and put the question. He was
"answered by an almost universal shout in the affirmative." Whereupon
Rhett and Williams conducted the old man to the chair. It was a (p. 294)
proud moment. Wise, of Virginia, afterward said, addressing a
complimentary speech to Mr. Adams, "and if, when you shall be gathered
to your fathers, I were asked to select the words which in my judgment
are calculated to give at once the best character of the man, I would
inscribe upon your tomb this sentence, 'I will put the question
myself!'" Doubtless Wise and a good many more would have been glad
enough to put almost any epitaph on a tombstone for Mr. Adams.[13] It
must, however, be acknowledged that the impetuous Southerners behaved
very handsomely by their arch foe on this occasion, and were for once
as chivalrous in fact as they always were in profession.

[Footnote 13: Not quite two years later, pending a
motion to reprimand Mr. Wise for fighting with a
member on the floor of the House, that gentleman
took pains insultingly to say, "that there was but