is pen in the ink, once more produced from a
drawer in the table the salmon-coloured tickets, and glanced again at
the general with a smile.

"For Mr. Speaker and Mrs. Speaker and all the little Speakers, to New
York and return."

BOOK 2.

CHAPTER XI. THE HOPPER

It is certainly not the function of a romance to relate, with the
exactness of a House journal, the proceedings of a Legislature. Somebody
has likened the state-house to pioneer Kentucky, a dark and bloody
ground over which the battles of selfish interests ebbed and flowed,--no
place for an innocent and unselfish bystander like Mr. Crewe, who
desired only to make of his State an Utopia; whose measures were for the
public good--not his own. But if any politician were fatuous enough
to believe that Humphrey Crewe was a man to introduce bills and calmly
await their fate; a man who, like Senator Sanderson, only came down
to the capital when he was notified by telegram, that politician was
entirely mistaken.

No sooner had his bills been assigned to the careful and just
consideration of the committees in charge of the Honourable Brush
Bascom, Mr. Botcher, and others than Mr. Crewe desired of each a day for
a hearing. Every member of the five hundred was provided with a copy;
nay, nearly every member was personally appealed to, to appear and speak
for the measures. Foresters, road builders, and agriculturists (expenses
paid) were sent for from other States; Mr. Ball and others came down
from Leith, and gentlemen who for a generation had written letters to
the newspapers turned up from other localities. In two cases the largest
committee rooms proved too small for the gathering which was the result
of Mr. Crewe's energy, and the legislative hall had to be lighted. The
State Tribune gave column reports of the hearings, and little editorial
pushes besides. And yet, when all was over, when it had been proved
beyond a doubt that, if the State would consent to spend a little
money, she would take the foremost rank among her forty odd sisters
for progression, the bills were still under consideration by those
hardheaded statesmen, Mr. Bascom and Mr. Botcher and their associates.

It could not be because these gentlemen did not know the arguments and
see the necessity. Mr. Crewe had had them to dinner, and had spent so
much time in their company presenting his case--to which they absolutely
agreed--that they took to a forced seclusion. The member from Leith