and a political power," to recover from the blow of the removal of the despots was in vain. "King" Jackson (as Hardin called him on the stump") had dealt his enemy a mortal blow for which there was, as it proved, no remedy in political pharmacy.

On May 16, 1834, Mr. Boon, of Indiana, called up a resolution. previously offered by him fixing June 16th as the day for adjournment. Mr. Hardin moved to strike out and insert “July 2d,” and said that "he presumed the honorable member was not more solicitous than he to return to the bosom of his family, his business, both professional and private, calling upon him (Mr. Hardin) as urgently and as imperiously as did that of any other honorable member." After giving in detail various reasons why adjournment should not occur at so early a day as proposed, he closed by saying "he hoped he would get credit for the assertion that his anxiety to return to his home was as great as that of any man, feeling with Cowper, in the beautiful lines he attributes to Selkirk

"When I think of my own native land,

In a moment I seem to be there;

But, alas! recollection at hand

Soon hurries me back to despair."

June 2d, Mr. Stevenson resigned as speaker, having been nominated by the President as minister to the English court. A lively contest for the vacancy ensued. Ten ballots occurred before any one received the requisite majority. On the first, second, and third ballots Richard H. Wilde, of Georgia, received the highest vote (Mr. Hardin receiving one on the second ballot). On the fourth, fifth, and sixth James K. Polk received a plurality. On the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth John Bell led Mr. Polk, and having a majority on the last ballot was chosen speaker. To the union of the enemies of Mr. Van Buren in the administration party and to the opposition the new speaker owed success. June 30th Congress adjourned, Mr. Hardin remaining until the closing hours of the session.

CHAPTER XIX.

A SOJOURNER.

E who looked upon the meagerness of Washington City fifty years ago little dreamed that within a lifetime the beauty and magnificence of to-day would be realized. If Mr. Hardin sometimes spoke of it disrespectfully, it must be remembered that in his day the national capital had few admirers. "A national capital," writes Mary Clemmer Ames, "could only be fitly built by the nation. For many years the Congress of the United States refused to do this to any fit degree, and the result for more than one generation was the most forlorn city in Christendom." *

It was during the period of Mr. Hardin's service in Congress that the well-known English traveler and writer, Miss Harriet Martineau, visited America. She spent some time at Washington, and her references to her experience and observations there are extremely graphic.

"The city is a grand mistake," she writes. "Its only attraction is the seat of government, and it is thought it will not long continue to be so. The far western States begin to demand a more central seat for Congress, and the Cincinnati people are already speculating upon which of their hills or tablelands is to be the site of the new capital. Whenever this takes place all will be over with Washington; 'thorns shall come up in her palaces, and the owl and the raven shall dwell in it,' while her sister cities of the East will be still spreading as fast as hands can be found to build them. * * * *

"The city itself is unlike any other that ever was seen, straggling out hither and thither, with a small house or two a quarter of a mile from any other; so that in making calls in the city we had to cross ditches and stiles, and walk alternately on grass and pavement, and strike across a field to reach a street. * * * Then there was the society singularly compounded from the largest variety of elements-foreign embassadors, the American government, members of Congress from Clay and Webster down. to Davy Crockett; Benton, of Missouri, and Cuthbert, with the fresh Irish. brogue, from Georgia; flippant young belles, and pious wives, dutifully attending their husbands and groaning over the frivolities of the place; grave judges, saucy travelers, pert newspaper reporters, melancholy Indian chiefs, and timid New England ladies, trembling on the verge of the vortex.

Ten Years in Washington, by Mary Clemmer Ames, page 67.

All

this was wholly unlike anything that is to be seen in any other city in the world; for all these are mixed up together in daily intercourse like the higher circle of a little village, and there is nothing else. * *

"It is in Washington that varieties of manners are conspicuous. There the Southerners appear to the most advantage, and the New Englanders to the least; the easy and frank courtesy of the gentry of the South (with an occasional touch of arrogance, however,) contrasting favorably with the cautious, somewhat gauche, and too deferential air of the members of the North. One fancies one can tell a New England member in the open air, by his deprecatory walk. He seems to bear in mind perpetually that he can not fight a duel, while other people can. The odd mortals that wander in from the Western border can not be described as a class, for no one is like anybody else. One has a neck like a crane, making an interval of inches between stock and chin. Another wears no cravat, apparently because there is no room for one. The third has his lank, black hair parted down the middle, and disposed in bands in front, so that he is taken for a woman when only his head is seen in a crowd. A fourth puts an arm around the neck of a neighbor on either side, as he stands, seemingly afraid of his tall, wirehung frame dropping to pieces if he tries to stand alone. A fifth makes something between a bow and a courtesy to everybody who comes near, and poses with a knowing air; all having shrewd faces, and being probably very fit for the business they come upon.

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Some of our pleasantest evenings we spent at home in a society of the highest order. Ladies, literary and fashionable, or domestic, would spend an hour with us on their way from dinner or to a ball. Members of Congress would repose themselves by our fireside. Mr. Clay, sitting upright on the sofa, with his snuff-box ever in his hand, would discourse for many an hour, in his even, soft, deliberate tone, on any one of the great subjects of American policy which might happen to start, always amazing us with the moderation of estimate and speech which so impetuous a nature has been able to attain. Mr. Webster, leaning back at his ease, telling stories, cracking jokes, shaking the sofa with the burst after burst of laughter, or smoothly discoursing to the perfect felicity of the local part of one's constitution, would illuminate an evening now and then. Mr. Calhoun-the cast-iron man— who looks as if he had never been born and never could be extinguished, would come in sometimes, and keep our understandings upon a painful stretch for a short while, and leave us to take to pieces his close, rapid, theoretical, illustrated talk, and see what we could make of it."*

In 1842, when it had changed little from the time of Mr. Hardin's last sojourn there, and of Miss Martineau's visit, it thus impressed a great English novelist, then traveling in the United States:

* Western Travel, Vol I., page 144, et seq. John Quincy Adams mentions meeting Miss Martineau, says she was sprightly and entertaining, notwithstanding the ear-trumpet her deafness required. J. Q. Adams' Memoirs, Vol. IX., page 200.

and

"It is sometimes called the 'City of Magnificent Distances,' but it might, with greater propriety, be termed the City of Magnificent Intentions,' for it is only on taking a bird's eye view of it from the top of the capitol, that one can at all comprehend the vast designs of its projector, an aspiring Frenchman. Spacious avenues, that begin in nothing and lead nowhere; streets, miles long, that only want houses, roads, and inhabitants; public buildings, that need but a public to be complete, and ornaments of great thoroughfares, which only lack great thoroughfares to ornament are its

leading features.

One might fancy the season over, and most of the houses gone out of town forever with their masters. To the admirers of cities it is a Barmecide feast, a pleasant field for the imagination to rove in, a monument raised to a deceased project, with not even a legible inscription to record its departed greatness.

"Such as it is it is likely to remain. It was originally chosen for the seat of government as a means of averting the conflicting jealousies and interests of the different States; and very probably, too, as being remote from mobs -a consideration not to be slighted, even in America."*

Mr. Dickens errs in assigning the cause that led to the selection of the District of Columbia for the site of the capital of the republic. Mr. James Parton is better authority on that subject, and the following is his interesting explanation of how the seat of government found its present location:

6

"The city of Washington, we may premise, was the unforeseen result of an after-dinner conversation between Hamilton, Jefferson, and two or three 'Potomac members' of Congress. Hamilton, finding himself in the minority upon one of his fiscal measures, implored the aid of Jefferson's influence over the Virginia delegation. 'Dine with me to-morrow,' said Jefferson, and I will invite some of the opposing members to meet you.' After dinner the subject was discussed, and two members agreed to change their votes-to save the Union, of course. It was observed, by one of the gentlemen present, that the measure proposed would prove so repugnant to the Southern people that some concomitant measure should be adopted to sweeten it to them a little.' A lump of sugar would be needful after the medicine. The lump of sugar proposed and swallowed was the selection of a site for the permanent capital of the country in the wilderness on the banks of the Potomac. In how many ways have the fortunes and the morals of the United States been influenced by that talk over Mr. Jefferson's mahogany in the year 1790!" t

The author of "Pickwick" was more deft at some other things than prophecy. Such as it was when he saw it, Washington remained substantially until near the outbreak of the civil war. But as the clouds

American Notes, by Charles Dickens, page 51.

Life of Andrew Jackson, by James Parton, Vol. III, page 596.

of war passed away and as the government put on new habiliments, its national city began to bedeck herself like a bride of the East. A half century has metamorphosed the straggling town, of whose future Dickens spoke so illy, into the handsomest capital of the world. In "American Notes" will also be found a description of a Washington hotel, and it is quite possible that the short-comings of that institution. may have colored the epicurean Englishman's view of his surroundings. Such or similar were the stopping places that welcomed Mr. Hardin and his colleagues in his day.

Partly from motives of economy, possibly from a desire for greater comfort or luxury, "messing" was then a common mode of life among congressmen. Governor Thomas Corwin and Mr. Hardin messed together during the Twenty third and Twenty-fourth Congresses, and other congenial Kentuckians, doubtless, completed the household. Messing was less unfrequent in that day than now. By messing is meant that several persons clubbed together, rented apartments, hired cooks, supplied their own larders, and thus maintained a domestic establishment during the session, which was broken up at the close. It was an independent as well as an economical arrangement, in which those participating exercised certain reserved powers over their expenditures, not possible at hotels and boarding-houses. There were, however, temptations to frugality in Washington life, the indulgence of which imperiled congressional prestige. The following is an illustration which also shows the possibilities of the franking privilege when liberally exercised: It is related of Joe L-, a congressman. once representing the Louisville district, that he carried the principles of saving economy so far as to send his soiled linen home by mail under his frank to be washed, and that his wife returned it after that process, adding to the address, "Free, Jennie L-."

It would hardly be proper to look into the mode of life of these messing sojourners too closely. It would be difficult to imagine a household embracing Ben Hardin and Tom Corwin other than good humored. These two, at least, were not given to drunkenness or wine, yet it may be admitted that gaming sometimes afforded amusement. Congressmen frequently called at each other's lodgings, in a social way, and gatherings often occurred which were marked by roystering fun and good fellowship. A story is related of how, on one occasion, the Kentucky delegation wagered an oyster supper with the Georgia delegation that it could produce a Kentuckian “home

or more ill-favored than the latter could bring from Georgia, the