able members. Some wore the coarse clothes
of the field, stained with red mud.

Old Aleck, he noted, had a red woollen comforter wound round his neck in
place of a shirt or collar. He had tried to go barefooted, but the Speaker
had issued a rule that members should come shod. He was easing his feet by
placing his brogans under the desk, wearing only his red socks.

Each member had his name painted in enormous gold letters on his desk, and
had placed beside it a sixty-dollar French imported spittoon. Even the
Congress of the United States, under the inspiration of Oakes Ames and
Speaker Colfax, could only afford one of domestic make, which cost a
dollar.

The uproar was deafening. From four to six negroes were trying to speak at
the same time. Aleck's majestic mouth with blue gums and projecting teeth
led the chorus as he ambled down the aisle, his bow-legs flying their
red-sock ensigns.

The Speaker singled him out--his voice was something which simply could
not be ignored--rapped and yelled:

"De gemman from Ulster set down!"

Aleck turned crestfallen and resumed his seat, throwing his big flat feet
in their red woollens up on his desk and hiding his face behind their
enormous spread.

He had barely settled in his chair before a new idea flashed through his
head and up he jumped again:

"Mistah Speaker!" he bawled.

"Orda da!" yelled another.

"Knock 'im in de head!"

"Seddown, nigger!"

The Speaker pointed his gavel at Aleck and threatened him laughingly:

"Ef de gemman from Ulster doan set down I gwine call 'im ter orda!"

Uncle Aleck greeted this threat with a wild guffaw, which the whole House
about him joined in heartily. They laughed like so many hens
cackling--when one started the others would follow.

The most of them were munching peanuts, and the crush of hulls under heavy
feet added a subnote to the confusion like the crackle of a prairie fire.

The ambition of each negro seemed to be to speak at least a half-dozen
times on each question, saying the same thing every time.

No man was allowed to talk five minutes without an interruption which
brought on another and another until the speaker was drowned in a storm of
contending yells. Their struggles to get the floor with bawlings,
bellowings, and contortions, and the senseless rap of the Speaker's gavel,
were something appalling.

On this scene, through fetid smoke and animal roar, looked down from the
walls, in marble bas-relief, the s