r dropped back in his chair, let his hands fall on his knees and
exclaimed, sorrowfully:

"Oh, Anson! I did not believe it."

Burlingame's eyes filled with tears, and he said:

"Charles, I saw you lying bleeding and insensible on the Senate floor,
when I did not expect ever again to hear you speak; and I intended then
to kill him. I tell you, Charles, we have got to meet those fellows with
guns, some day, and the sooner we begin, the better." On being
consulted, both these champions of the right said the _Visiter_ must not
desert the cause. Sumner added solemnly:

"The slave never had more need of it; never had more need of you."

So that editor went on with her work, feeling such an opinion as almost
a divine call.

In talking with Mr. Sumner during that visit, I learned that the same
doctor attended both President Harrison and President Taylor in their
last illness, and used his professional authority to prevent their
friends seeing them until the fatal termination of their illness was
certain. Also, that it was that same doctor who was within call when
Brooks made his assault on Sumner, took charge of the case, and made an
official statement that the injury was very slight, gave it a
superficial dressing, and sought to exclude every one from the room of
his patient. Said Sumner:

"I shuddered when I recovered consciousness, and found this man beside
me."

He dismissed him promptly, and did not hesitate to say that he believed
he would not have recovered under his treatment. When the South seceded,
this useful man left Washington and joined the Confederacy.

The campaign of 1856 was very spirited. A large mass meeting was held in
Pittsburg, and Cassius M. Clay was the orator of the occasion. He was at
the heighth of a great national popularity, and seemed as if any honor
might be open to him. He dined that evening with Robert Palmer, of
Allegheny, and a small party of friends. The house was brilliantly
lighted, and at the table, while Clay was talking, and every one in gala
day spirits, the light suddenly went out, and what a strange sensation
fell on one guest--a feeling of coming evil.

There was no re-lighting. The gas had failed, prophetic of the going out
of that brilliant career, and its slow ending in the glimmer of a single
candle.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

FINANCE AND DESERTION.

The _Pittsburg Saturday Visiter_ began life with two subscribers, and in
the second year reached six thousand, but wa