of Baltimore friends, died suddenly this
morning. The death occurred at a point remote from the telegraph. No
particulars have yet been received at Washington.' It is with profound
sorrow, Mr. President, that I make this announcement. Though Senator
Ridgefield had long been my political antagonist, he had also been, for
many years, a valued personal friend. The Republican Party has lost one
of its great leaders, and the State of Indiana a son to whom men of all
parties have given their ungrudging admiration. Mr. President, I move
that the senate do now adjourn to meet at ten o'clock to-morrow
morning."

Even before the motion could be put, Bassett was passing about among the
desks. The men he spoke to nodded understandingly. A mild, subdued
excitement reigned in the chamber. It flashed through the mind of every
Democratic member that that death in the Chesapeake had brought a crisis
in the war between Bassett and Thatcher. In due course the assembly,
convened in joint session, would mourn decorously the death of a
statesman who had long and honorably represented the old Hoosier State
in the greatest tribunal on earth; and his passing would be feelingly
referred to in sonorous phrases as an untoward event, a deplorable and
irreparable loss to the commonwealth. To Republicans, however, it was a
piece of stupendous ill-luck that the Senator should have indulged in
the childish pastime of duck shooting at an inconvenient season when the
Democratic majority in the general assembly would be able to elect a
successor to complete his term of office.

When the gavel fell, adjourning the senate, gentlemen were already
seeking in the Federal Constitution for the exact language of the
section bearing upon this emergency. If the Republican governor had not
so gayly summoned the legislature he might have appointed a Senator of
his own political faith to serve until the next regular session,
following the elections a year hence. It was ungenerous and disloyal of
Roger B. Ridgefield to have taken himself out of the world in this
abrupt fashion. Before the first shock had passed, there were those
about the State House who, scanning the newspaper extras, were saying
that a secret fondness for poker and not an enthusiasm for ducks had led
the Honorable Roger B. Ridgefield to the remote arm of the Chesapeake,
where he had been the guest of a financier whose influence in the upper
house of Congress was notoriously pernicious. This did not,