was a thoroughly good-hearted,
happy-go-lucky person who was afterwards for several years in Congress.
He had been a local magistrate and was called Judge. Generally he and I
were friendly, but occasionally I did something that irritated him. He
was always willing to vote for any other member's bill himself, and he
regarded it as narrow-minded for any one to oppose one of his
bills, especially if the opposition was upon the ground that it was
unconstitutional--for his views of the Constitution were so excessively
liberal as to make even me feel as if I belonged to the straitest sect
of strict constructionists. On one occasion he had a bill to appropriate
money, with obvious impropriety, for the relief of some miscreant whom
he styled "one of the honest yeomanry of the State." When I explained to
him that it was clearly unconstitutional, he answered, "Me friend, the
Constitution don't touch little things like that," and then added, with
an ingratiating smile, "Anyhow, I'd never allow the Constitution to
come between friends." At the time I was looking over the proofs of Mr.
Bryce's "American Commonwealth," and I told him the incident. He put it
into the first edition of the "Commonwealth"; whether it is in the last
edition or not, I cannot say.

On another occasion the same gentleman came to an issue with me in
a debate, and wound up his speech by explaining that I occupied what
"lawyers would call a quasi position on the bill." His rival was a man
of totally different type, a man of great natural dignity, also born in
Ireland. He had served with gallantry in the Civil War. After the close
of the war he organized an expedition to conquer Canada. The expedition,
however, got so drunk before reaching Albany that it was there
incarcerated in jail, whereupon its leader abandoned it and went into
New York politics instead. He was a man of influence, and later occupied
in the Police Department the same position as Commissioner which I
myself at one time occupied. He felt that his rival had gained too much
glory at my expense, and, walking over with ceremonious solemnity to
where the said rival was sitting close beside me, he said to him: "I
would like you to know, Mr. Cameron [Cameron, of course, was not the
real name], that Mr. Roosevelt knows more law in a wake than you do in a
month; and, more than that, Michael Cameron, what do you mane by quoting
Latin on the floor of this House when you don't know the alpha and
omayga o