please." They concluded on the whole
that Vermont brain would hold its own with Michigan and Illinois.

One of the most amusing scenes I ever witnessed was a call
of the House in the old days, when there was no quorum. The
doors were shut. The Speaker sent officers for the absentees.
They were brought to the bar of the House one after another.
Judge Poland happened to be one of the absentees. My colleague,
Mr. Dawes, was in the chair. Poland was brought to the bar.
Mr. Dawes addressed him with solemnity: "Mr. Poland, of Vermont,
you have been absent from the session of the House without
its leave. What excuse have you to offer?" The Judge paused
a moment and then replied in a tone of great gravity and emotion:
"I went with my wife to call on my minister, and I stayed
a little too long." The House accepted the excuse, and I
suppose the religious people of the Judge's district would
have maintained him in office for a thousand years by virtue
of that answer, if they had had their way. A man who had
been so long exposed to the wickedness and temptations of Washington,
and had committed only the sin of staying a little too long
when he called on his minister might safely be trusted anywhere.

Judge Peters, of Maine, did not speak very frequently and
did not attract much public attention. But he had a strong
influence with the members of the House. He was on the Judiciary
Committee. He made brief, pithy speeches which generally
convinced the House. He declined to continue in the National
service, where the people of Maine would have been willing
to keep him until his dying day. He afterward became Chief
Justice of Maine, and sustained the high character which the
Bench of that State has had from the beginning.

There is one anecdote of him, which does not come within
the sphere of my recollections, but which I think perhaps
my readers will prefer to anything that does. A few years
ago a young man who kept a grocery store was tried before
Judge Peters for larceny. He was a very respectable young
tradesman. The Salvation Army had engaged quarters next to
his store, where they disturbed him and his customers a good
deal by playing on the drum and other similar religious services.
But that was not all. They used to come out on the sidewalk
and beat a large drum and sing and kneel in prayer just before
his door, much to the disturbance of his customers and the
aggravation of the young grocer. One day he p