office of presiding over the Senate is
commonly not of very great consequence. It is quite important
that the President of the Senate should be a pleasant-natured
gentleman, and the gentleman in the Senator will almost always
respond to the gentleman in the Chair. Senators do not submit
easily to any vigorous exercise of authority. Vice-Presidents
Wheeler, Morton and Stevenson, and more lately, Mr. Frye,
asserted their authority with as little show of force as if
they were presiding over a company of guests at their own
table. But the order and dignity of the body have been preserved.

Mr. Davis's fame must rest on his long and faithful and able
service as a wise, conscientious and learned Judge. In writing
these recollections, I have dwelt altogether too much on little
foibles and weaknesses, which seem to have something amusing
in them, and too little, I am afraid, on the greater qualities
of the men with whom I have served. This is perhaps true
as to David Davis. But I have said very much what I should
have said to him, if I had been chatting with him, as I very
frequently did, in the cloak room of the Senate.

He was a man of enormous bulk. No common arm chair would
hold him. There is a huge chair, said to have been made for
Dixon H. Lewis of Alabama, long before the Civil War, which
was brought up from the basement of the Capitol for his use.
The newspaper correspondents used to say that he had to be
surveyed for a new pair of trousers.

I was one night in the Chair of the Senate when the session
lasted to near three o'clock in the morning. It was on the
occasion of the passage of the bill for purchasing silver.
The night was very dark and stormy and the rain came down
in torrents. Just before I put the final question I sent
a page for my coat and hat, and, as soon as I declared the
Senate adjourned, started for the outer door. There were
very few carriages in waiting. I secured one of them and
then invited Davis and his secretary and another Senator,
when they came along, to get in with me. When we stopped
to leave Judge Davis at the National Hotel, where he lived,
it was found impossible to get the door of the hack open.
His great weight pressed it down, so that the door was held
tight as in a vise. The hackman and the porters pulled on
the outside, and the passengers pushed and struggled from
within; but in vain. After fifteen or twenty minutes, it
occurred to some one that we within shoul