ld of
ten years might have done. There _was_ danger of a collision, of course,
growing out of the very fact that everybody went down armed. I was one
of the very few who could not borrow a revolver or did not want one--no
matter which.

"Suffice it to say that I reached Washington on Sunday morning--the day
previous to the inauguration--found the hotels full and took lodgings at
a private house a few hundred yards from the Capitol, and spent the
early part of the day in inspecting the preparations made for the
holiday show, in and about the Capitol building. The courtesy of Colonel
Forney, then Clerk of the House, arranged for my admission to the
building during the ceremonies of the next day; and that of Douglas
Wallach, of the _Star_, furnished me a seat in the reporters' gallery of
the Senate for that evening when the last session of the expiring
Congress was to be held and a last effort made for putting through those
'compromise resolutions' which it was then believed might 'save the
Union,' but which we now know to have been as useless, even if they
could have been passed, as so much whistling against the wind.

"Although it was Sunday, time was pressing, and the fate of the nation
seemed to be hanging upon a breath; so the Senate had arranged a session
for five o'clock, which seemed very likely to last well into the night,
and was almost certain to be crowded to suffocation. As you will
remember, it _did_ last until seven the next morning--after daylight,
and witnessed one of the most exciting debates in the history of that
body,--in which Baker of Oregon flashed out even more than usual of his
patriotic eloquence; and white-haired, sad old Crittenden of Kentucky
moaned out words of fear for the nation, that have since been but too
truly realized; and Mason of Virginia showed more boldly than ever the
cloven foot of the traitor who would not have reconciliation at any
price; and Douglas rose above his short stature in alternately lashing
one and the other of those whom he believed to be equally enemies to his
type of conservatism. No one who sat out that session will ever forget
it--but enough of this, which should be written and not spoken.

"Of course after dinner that day I went down to the Hotels on the
Avenue, to take a peep at the political barometer and see what was the
prospect for violence on the morrow. It was a dark and stormy one. Most
of the avowedly Southern element had disappeared from the street,