t session a little by special statute, which
should have Congress meet immediately after the November election,
a little earlier than now. In that case, you can probably without
disadvantage shorten the first session of Congress so as to get
away by the middle of May or the first of June and get rid of the
very disagreeable Washington heat.

"I wish you would throw your great influence, so much increased by
the renewed expression of the confidence of your State, against
what seems to me the most dangerous single proposition now pending
before the people, a plan to elect Senators of the United States
by popular vote.

"I am, with high regard, faithfully yours,
"Geo. F. Hoar.

"Hon. S. M. Cullom,
"Chicago, Ills."

Senator Dawes, of Massachusetts, Senator Hoar's colleague, was not
the cultivated man that Senator Hoar was, and neither would I say
he was a man of strong and independent character. He was very
popular in the Senate, probably far more popular with Senators than
his colleague, and it was much easier for him to pass bills in
which he was interested. He was influential as a legislator and
a man of great probity of character.

For some reason or other--why, I never knew--he was one of the very
few Eastern Senators of my time who gave special attention to Indian
affairs. He was chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs for
years, and was the acknowledged authority on that subject in the
Senate. When he retired he was placed at the head of the so-called
Dawes Commission, having in charge the interests of the tribes of
Indians in Oklahoma and the Indian territory. He was an honest
man, and having inherited no fortune, he consequently retired from
the Senate a poor man. The appointment was very agreeable to him
on that account, but it was given to him more especially because
he knew more about Indian matters than any other man.

As I have been writing these recollections of the men with whom I
have been associated in public life for the last half-century, I
have had occasion to mention a number of times, Senator Orville H.
Platt, of Connecticut, who was two years older than I, and who took
his seat in the Senate in 1879, serving there until his death in
1905.

We became very friendly almost immediately after I entered the
Senate. One bond of friendship between us from the beginning was,
we each had a senior colleague a celebrated General of Civil War
fame--Hawley, of Connecticut and Logan, o