s. Perhaps that explains the transformation. Anyhow the
Congressional eulogist takes to verse as naturally as a moth to a
candle, and with about the same result to his reputation for sense.

The poetry is commonly not his own; what it violates every law of sense,
fitness, metre, rhyme and taste it is. But nine times in ten it is
some dog's-eared, shop-worn quotation from one of the "standard" bards,
usually Shakspere. There are familiar passages from that poet which
have been so often heard in "the halls of legislation" that they have
acquired an infamy which unfits them for publication in a decent family
newspaper; and Shakspere himself, reposing in Elysium on his bed of
asphodel and moly, omits them when reading his complete works to the
shades of Kit Marlowe and Ben Jonson, for their sins.

This whole business ought to be "cut out" It is not only a waste of
time and a sore trial to the patience of the country; it is absolutely
immoral. It is not true that a member of Congress who, while living
was a most ordinary mortal, becomes by the accident of death a hero, a
saint, "an example to American youth." Nobody believes these abominable
"eulogies," and nobody should be permitted to utter them in the time
and place designated for another purpose. A "tribute" that is exacted
by custom and has not the fire and light of spontaneity is without
sincerity or sense. A simple resolution of regret and respect is all
that the occasion requires and would not inhibit any further utterance
that friends and admirers of the deceased might be moved to make
elsewhere. If any bereaved gentlemen, feeling his heart getting into his
head, wishes to tickle his ear with his tongue by way of standardizing
his emotion let him hire a hall and do so. But he should not make the
Capitol a "Place of Wailing" and the Congressional Record a book of
bathos.

SOME FEATURES OF THE LAW

I.

THERE is a difference between religion and the amazing circumstructure
which, under the name of theology, the priesthoods have builded round
about it, which for centuries they made the world believe was the true
temple, and which, after incalculable mischiefs wrought, immeasurable
blood spilled in its extension and consolidation, is only now beginning
to crumble at the touch of reason. There is the same difference between
the laws and the law--the naked statutes (bad enough, God knows) and
the incomputable additions made to them by lawyers. This immense