commit the bill. It
was in vain for the gentleman to attempt to escape it by disclaiming
it; the fact was before the Committee. But he would say to the
gentleman that he scorned his imputation. How dare the gentleman
undertake to assert that he had professed friendship for the measure
with a view to kill it, to assassinate it by sending it to the
bottom of the calendar? And then, when he said that the Committee
of the Whole had under its control the House bill upon this identical
subject, which the Committee intended to take up, discuss, amend,
and report to the House, the gentleman skulked behind the Senate
bill, which had been sent to the foot of the calendar!"

"Skulked!" hissed Mr. Breckinridge. "I ask the gentleman to withdraw
that word!"

"I withdraw nothing!" replied Mr. Cutting. "I have uttered what
I have said in answer to one of the most violent and most personal
attacks that has ever been witnessed upon this floor."

"Then," said Mr. Breckinridge, "when the gentleman says I skulked,
he says what is false!" The Southern members began to gather around
the excited Kentuckian, and the Speaker, pounding with his gavel,
pronounced the offensive remark out of order.

"Mr. Chairman," quietly remarked Mr. Cutting, "I do not intend upon
this floor to answer the remark which the gentleman from Kentucky
has thought proper to employ. It belongs to a different region.
It is not ere that I will desecrate my lips with undertaking to
retort in that manner."

This settled the question, and a duel appeared to be inevitable.
The usual correspondence followed, but President Pierce and other
potent friends of the would-be belligerents interfered, and the
difficult was amicably adjusted, under "the code of honor," without
recourse to weapons.

Governor Marcy, President Pierce's Secretary of State, was a great
card-player, and Mr. Labouchere tells a good story which happened
when he was Secretary of the British Legation at Washington. "I
went," said he, "with the British Minister, to a pleasant watering-
place in Virginia, where we were to meet Mr. Marcy, the then United
States Secretary of State, and a reciprocity treaty between Canada
and the United States was to be quietly discussed. Mr. Marcy, the
most genial of men, was as cross as a bear. He would agree to
nothing. 'What on earth is the matter with your chief?' I said to
a secretary who accompanied him. 'He does not have his rubber of
whist,' answered the