er and Congress was about to adjourn I went to
Washington and was sworn in. A friend of mine, Col. Wake Holman, had
made a bet with one of our pals I would be under arrest before I had
been twenty-four hours in town, and won it. It happened in this wise:
The night of the day when I took my seat there was an all-night session.
I knew too well what that meant, and, just from a long tiresome journey,
I went to bed and slept soundly till sunrise. Just as I was up and
dressing for a stroll about the old, familiar, dearly loved quarter of
the town there came an imperative rap upon the door and a voice said:
"Get up, colonel, quick! This is a sergeant at arms. There has been a
call of the House and I am after you. Everybody is drunk, more or less,
and they are noisy to have some fun with you."

It was even as he said. Everybody, more or less, was drunk--especially
the provisional speaker whom Mr. Randall had placed in the chair--and
when we arrived and I was led a prisoner down the center aisle
pandemonium broke loose.

They had all sorts of fun with me, such as it was. It was moved that I
be fined the full amount of my mileage. Then a resolution was offered
suspending my membership and sending me under guard to the old Capitol
prison. Finally two or three of my friends rescued me and business was
allowed to proceed. It was the last day of a very long session and those
who were not drunk were worn out.

When I returned home there was a celebration in honor of the bet Wake
Holman had won at my expense. Wake was the most attractive and lovable
of men, by nature a hero, by profession a "filibuster" and soldier of
fortune. At two and twenty he was a private in Col. Humphrey Marshall's
Regiment of Kentucky Riflemen, which reached the scene of hostilities
upon the Rio Grande in the midsummer of 1846. He had enlisted from Owen
county--"Sweet Owen," as it used to be called--and came of good stock,
his father, Col. Harry Holman, in the days of aboriginal fighting and
journalism, a frontier celebrity. Wake's company, out on a scout, was
picked off by the Mexicans, and the distinction between United States
soldiers and Texan rebels not being yet clearly established, a drumhead
court-martial ordered "the decimation."

This was a decree that one of every ten of the Yankee captives should be
shot. There being a hundred of Marshall's men, one hundred beans--ninety
white and ten black--were put in a hat. Then the company was mustered as
o