w Weed and William
Schouler as his aides-de-camp, endeavored to elect Lewis D. Campbell,
an Ohio American. The Southern Know-Nothings voted at one time
for Henry M. Fuller, of Pennsylvania, but they dropped him like a
hot potato when they learned that he had accepted a place on the
Republican Committee of his State. William Aiken, a large slaveholder
in South Carolina, was the favorite Southern candidate, although
the vote of the solid South was successively given to several
others. Meanwhile, as day after day passed, the President's message
was withheld, and all legislation was at a dead-lock. The Sergeant-
at-Arms, Colonel Glossbrenner, an ex-member of the House, obtained
a loan of twenty thousand dollars from a bank in Pennsylvania,
which enabled him to make advances to impecunious members of both
parties, and thus to insure his re-election.

Early in January an attempt was made to "sit it out," and all night
the excited House seethed like a boiling cauldron; verdant novices
were laughed down as they endeavored to make some telling point,
while sly old stagers lay in ambush to spring out armed with "points
of order." Emasculate conservatives were snubbed by followers of
new prophets; belligerent Southrons glared fiercely at phlegmatic
Yankees; one or two intoxicated Solons gabbled sillily upon every
question, and sober clergymen gaped, as if sleepy and disgusted
with political life. Banks, unequaled in his deportment, was as
cool as a summer cucumber; Aiken, his principal opponent, was
courteous and gentlemanlike to all; Giddings wore a broad-brimmed
hat to shield his eyes from the rays of the gas chandelier; Stephens,
of Georgia, piped forth his shrill response, and Senator Wilson
went busily about "whipping-in." Soon after midnight the South
Americans began to relate their individual experience in true camp-
meeting style, the old-line Democrats were rampant, the few Whigs
were jubilant, and the bone of Catholicism was pretty will picked
by those who had been peeping at politics through dark-lanterns,
and who were "know-nothings" about what they had done. In short,
every imaginable topic of discussion, in order or out of order,
was lugged in to kill time.

Meanwhile the supply of ham at the eating-counter below-stairs was
exhausted, the oysters were soon after minus, and those who had
brought no lunch had to mumble ginger-cakes. It was remarked by
good judges that as the morning advanced the coffee grew