or the express purpose of their
consideration and attended by a small minority of the members of the
respective houses of the legislative branch of government."

Obviously, the whole system of pension legislation was faulty. Mere
individual effort on the part of the President to screen the output of
the system was scarcely practicable, even if it were congruous with
the nature of the President's own duties; but nevertheless Cleveland
attempted it, and kept at it with stout perseverance. One of his veto
messages remarks that in a single day nearly 240 special pension bills
were presented to him. He referred them to the Pension Bureau for
examination and the labor involved was so great that they could not
be returned to him until within a few hours of the limit fixed by the
Constitution for the President's assent.

There could be no more signal proof of President Cleveland's constancy
of soul than the fact that he was working hard at his veto forge, with
the sparks falling thickly around, right in his honeymoon. He married
Miss Frances Folsom of Buffalo on June 2, 1886. The ceremony took place
in the White House, and immediately thereafter, the President and his
charming bride went to Deer Park, Maryland, a mountain resort. The
respite from official cares was brief; on June 8th, the couple returned
to Washington and some of the most pugnacious of the pension vetoes
were sent to Congress soon after. The rest of his public life was passed
under continual storm, but the peace and happiness of his domestic life
provided a secure refuge.

On the other hand, the rebuffs which Democratic Congressmen received in
the matter of pension legislation were, it must be admitted, peculiarly
exasperating. Reviewing the work of the Forty-ninth Congress, "The
Nation" mentioned three enactments which it characterized as great
achievements that should be placed to the credit of Congress. Those were
the act regulating the presidential succession, approved January 18,
1886; the act regulating the counting of the electoral votes, approved
February 3, 1887; and the repeal of the Tenure of Office Act, approved
March 3, 1887. But all three measures originated in the Senate, and
the main credit for their enactment might be claimed by the Republican
party. There was some ground for the statement that they would have
been enacted sooner but for the disturbance of legislative routine by
political upheavals in the House; and certainly no one could pre