o tell
Radbourn his whole secret, but he gave it up as preposterous.

* * * * *

Legislation was incredibly slow.

"Beats the devil how little we fellows amount to here," Clancy said one
night after they had been sitting all day in their seats, while Brown
of Georgia, Dixon of Maine, and others of their like had wasted hour
after hour in all sorts of tedious discussions upon mere
technicalities. "We can't even vote, by thunder! I'm going to make a
great break one of these days and make a motion to adjourn."

Bradley laughed dutifully, for this was the ancient joke.

"It's an outrage," Clancy fumed. The speaker had refused to recognize
him and he was furious. "The speaker's got everything in his hands.
Say, do you know that it's all made up the day before who's goin' to be
recognized?"

"Yes, I found that out some time ago," said Bradley quietly.

"Well, I feel like making a great big kick."

"It wouldn't do any good."

"Yes, it would, it would relieve my feelings. It's a pretty how de do,
to send a man here to represent his constituents and then put the whole
power of the house into the hands of the speaker and the committee on
rules."

Bradley's seat came between two of the old members, Samuels of
Mississippi and Col. Maxwell of South Carolina, and they were
constantly talking across Bradley's back or before his face, ignoring
him completely. It wore on him so that he fell into the habit of
sitting over beside the profane Clancy in Bidwell's seat. Bidwell
occupied the leather-covered lounge behind the screen so industriously
that no one else felt privileged to throw himself down there.

The drinking disgusted Bradley, and the obscene talk which he heard in
snatches as he went past sickened him. The same sort of attitude toward
the female clerks was expressed by a certain class of the legislators.
He began to wonder if he were not abnormal in some way by reason of his
repugnance to all this desolating derision of really holy things. He
found that while he had less religion than these men, they had
infinitely less reverence for the things which he considered sacred.

Some of the better class of members invited him to their houses and he
went occasionally, and if he found them uncongenial he never went
again. He could not make calls out of duty. It seemed to him that they
took very little interest in the higher side of politics and some of
them he found were unaware