my time,
not in my time; after me the deluge!'"

Soon after Mr. Colfax's election as speaker of the Thirty-eighth
Congress, I met him in a restaurant. He expressed surprise that he had
not heard from me in regard to a place upon a committee. I said that
the subject did not occupy my thoughts--that I had work enough whether
I was upon a committee or not. He expressed himself as disturbed by
the fact that he could not give me as good a place as he wished to
give me. I tried to relieve his mind upon that point. In all my
legislative experience I never made any suggestion as to committee
work. Mr. Colfax placed me upon the Judiciary Committee, which, in the
end, was the best place to which I could have been assigned.

Mr. Colfax was made of consequence in the country by the newspapers,
and he was ruined by his timidity. If he had admitted that he was an
owner of stock in the Credit Mobilier Company, not much could have
been made against him. His denials and explanations, which were either
false or disingenuous, and his final admission of a fact which implied
that he had been in the receipt of a quarterly payment from a post-
office contractor, completed his ruin. There was a time when the
country over-estimated his ability. He was a genial, kindly man, with
social qualities and an abundance of information in reference to men
in the United States and to recent and passing politics. He had
newspaper knowledge and aptitude for gathering what may be called
information as distinguished from learning. He was a victim to two
passions or purposes in life, that are in a degree inconsistent--public
life and money-making. Instances there have been of success, but I
have never known a case where a public man has not suffered in
reputation by the knowledge that he had accumulated a fortune while he
was engaged in the public service. As a speaker of the House, Colfax
was agreeable and popular, but he lacked in discipline. His rule was
lax, and there can be no doubt that from the commencement of his
administration there had been a decline in what may be termed the
morale of the House. Something of its reputation for dignity and
decorum had been lost.

A young man from New York, Mr. Chanler, made a speech in the Thirty-
eighth or Thirty-ninth Congress, which seemed to favor the
Confederacy. This phase of his speech was due to the fact that he
was a transcendental State Rights advocate. He did not believe in
secession