nis, as we called him, the chance. Something
in the matter gave a good deal of popularity to the Frederic Ingham
name; and at the adjourned election, next week, Frederic Ingham was
chosen to the legislature. Whether this was I or Dennis, I never really
knew. My friends seemed to think it was I; but I felt, that, as Dennis
had done the popular thing, he was entitled to the honor; so I sent him
to Augusta when the time came, and he took the oaths. And a very
valuable member he made. They appointed him on the Committee on
Parishes; but I wrote a letter for him, resigning, on the ground that he
took an interest in our claim to the stumpage in the minister's
sixteenths of Gore A, next No. 7, in the 10th Range. He never made any
speeches, and always voted with the minority, which was what he was sent
to do. He made me and himself a great many good friends, some of whom I
did not afterwards recognize as quickly as Dennis did my parishioners.
On one or two occasions, when there was wood to saw at home, I kept him
at home; but I took those occasions to go to Augusta myself. Finding
myself often in his vacant seat at these times, I watched the
proceedings with a good deal of care; and once was so much excited that
I delivered my somewhat celebrated speech on the Central School-District
question, a speech of which the "State of Maine" printed some extra
copies. I believe there is no formal rule permitting strangers to speak;
but no one objected.

Dennis himself, as I said, never spoke at all. But our experience this
session led me to think, that, if, by some such "general understanding"
as the reports speak of in legislation daily, every member of Congress
might leave a double to sit through those deadly sessions and answer to
roll-calls and do the legitimate party-voting, which appears stereotyped
in the regular list of Ashe, Bocock, Black, etc., we should gain
decidedly in working-power. As things stand, the saddest State prison I
ever visit is that Representatives' Chamber in Washington. If a man
leaves for an hour, twenty "correspondents" may be howling, "Where was
Mr. Pendergrast when the Oregon bill passed?" And if poor Pendergrast
stays there! Certainly, the worst use you can make of a man is to put
him in prison!

I know, indeed, that public men of the highest rank have resorted to
this expedient long ago. Dumas's novel of the "Iron Mask" turns on the
brutal imprisonment of Louis the Fourteenth's double. There seems littl