g Mr. Clay rose, walked to
the opposite side of the Senate Chamber, and stopping in front of
the desk of the Senator from Alabama, said, in a pleasant tone,
"King, give us a pinch of your snuff?" Mr. King, springing to his
feet, held out his hand, which was grasped by Mr. Clay and cordially
shaken, the Senators and spectators applauding the pacific
demonstration.

The leading Washington correspondent at that time was Dr. Francis
Bacon, brother of the Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon, of New Haven,
Connecticut. He wrote for the New York _American_, then edited by
Charles King, signing his articles R. M. T. H.--Regular Member
Third House. Dr. Bacon wielded a powerful pen, and when he chose
so to do could condense a column of denunciation, satire, and
sarcasm in to a single paragraph. He was a fine scholar, fearless
censor, and terse writer, giving his many readers a clear idea of
what was transpiring at the Federal metropolis.

A new-comer among the correspondents during the Harrison Administration
was Mr. Nathan Sargent, whose correspondence to the Philadelphia
_United States Gazette_, over the signature of "Oliver Oldschool,"
soon became noted. His carefully written letters gave a continuous
narrative of important events as they occurred, and he was one who
aided in making the Whig party, like the Federal party, which had
preceded it, eminently respectable.

Washington correspondents, up to this time, had been the mediums
through which a large portion of the citizens of the United States
obtained their information concerning national affairs. The only
reports of the debates in Congress appeared in the Washington
newspapers often several weeks after their delivery. James Gordon
Bennett, who had then become proprietor of the New York _Herald_,
after publishing President Harrison's call for an extra session of
Congress in advance of his contemporaries, determined to have the
proceedings and debates reported for and promptly published in his
own columns. To superintend the reporting, he engaged Robert
Sutton, who organized a corps of phonographers, which was the
nucleus of the present able body of official reporters of the
debates. Sutton was a short, stout, pragmatical Englishman, whose
desire to obtain extra allowances prompted him to revise, correct,
and polish up reports which should have been verbatim, and thus to
take the initiative in depriving official reports of debates of a
large share of their value. Since t