presence in the
Senate Chamber. Stokes remonstrated, but the Sergeant-at-Arms
persisted, and rose from the table, the Senator grumbling and
declaring that he had supposed that Stokes would have thus prematurely
broken up the game he would not have sat down to play with him.

Whist was regularly played at many of the "Congressional messes,"
and at private parties a room was always devoted to whist-playing.
Once when the wife of Henry Clay was chaperoning a young lady from
Boston, at a party given by one of his associates in the Cabinet,
they passed through the card-room, where Mr. Clay and other gentlemen
were playing whist. The young lady, in her Puritan simplicity,
inquired: "Is card-playing a common practice here?" "Yes," replied
Mrs. Clay, "the gentlemen always play when they get together."
"Don't it distress you," said the Boston maiden, "to have Mr. Clay
gamble?" "Oh! dear, no!" composedly replied the statesman's wife,
"he 'most always wins."

There were only a few billiard-rooms, mostly patronized by the
members of the foreign legations or visiting young men from the
Northern cities. Ten-pin alleys were abundant, and some of the
muscular Congressmen from the frontier would make a succession of
"ten strikes" with great ease, using the heaviest balls. Some of
the English residents organized a cricket club, and used to play
on a level spot in "the slashes," near where the British Legation
was afterward built, but the game was not popular, and no American
offered to join the club.

[Facsimile]
Your obedt servt.
William H. Crawford
William Harris Crawford was born in Virginia, February 24th, 1772;
was United States Senator 1807-1813; Minister to France, 1813-1815;
Secretary of War, 1815-1816; Secretary of the Treasury, 1816-1825;
Judge of the Northern Circuit Court of Georgia, 1827, until he died
at Elberton, Georgia, September 15th, 1834.

CHAPTER IV.
PROMINENT SENATORS OF 1827.

The old Senate Chamber, now used by the Supreme Court, was admirably
adapted for the deliberations of the forty-eight gentlemen who
composed the upper house of the Nineteenth Congress. Modeled after
the theatres of ancient Greece, it possessed excellent acoustic
properties, and there was ample accommodation in the galleries for
the few strangers who then visited Washington. The Senate used to
meet at noon and generally conclude its day's work by three o'clock,
while adjournments over from Thursday until the following