-in spite of
the very earnest contention to the contrary, that if the laborer
elected in good faith when he came into the district to make
it his legal residence, it became his legal residence, even
if he intended to leave it and get another after his job was
done.

We applied a like doctrine to the case of the students, holding
that a student of a college, being personally present in any
district, had the right if he so desired, to take up his abode
there, and make it by his election his legal residence for
a fixed and limited time.

The question of the paupers we left undecided, as it turned
out that whichever way it were decided, Mr. Cessna had not
overcome his opponent's legal majority.

We also decided an Arkansas case where the title to his seat
of a well known Republican member of Congress was at stake,
in favor of his Democratic contestant.

I was somewhat gratified in the midst of a storm of vituperation
which I had encountered for some political action of mine,
in which I was charged by almost the entire Democratic press
of the country with being a bitter partisan to find two Democratic
gentlemen who had owed their seats to the impartiality of
the Committee on Elections, coming very zealously to the rescue.

I served also from 1873 to 1875 on the Committee on Railroads
and Canals. I have no recollection of doing anything on that
Committee, except aiding in reporting a bill for the regulation
by National authority of railroads engaged in interstate commerce,
in defence of which I made a very elaborate speech. But I
was able to secure the passage of one very interesting and
important measure. James B. Eads, the famous engineer, architect
of the great St. Louis bridge, had a plan for opening to commerce
the mouth of the Mississippi River by a system of jetties.
He had submitted his plan to the Board of Engineers appointed
by the War Department. But he could get no encouragement,
and of the twenty members of that Board, only one, General
Barnard, the President, looked with any approval upon his
scheme. The Board thought that a very long and costly canal
was the only method of securing a water-way which would enable
ocean steamers to reach New Orleans, and the product of the
Mississippi valley to be carried to Europe that way. Captain
Eads appeared before the Committee on Railroads and Canals
and urged his scheme in a speech of great interest and ability.
The Committee adjourned for a week. They we