ion or the Panama Canal Commission. He accepted the former,
serving thereon for one term. He gave the duties of this position
the same attention and study that he did when a member of the
Senate.

Senator Vest was an entirely different style of man. He did not
pay the close attention to the routine work of the Senate that
Senator Cockrell did, but he was honest and faithful to his duty,
and an able man as well. He was a great orator, and I have heard
him make on occasion as beautiful speeches as were ever delivered
in the Senate. At the time of his death he was the last surviving
member of the Confederate Senate.

He told me a rather interesting story once about how he came to
quit drinking whiskey. He said he came home to Missouri after the
war, found little to do, and being almost without means, took to
drinking whiskey pretty hard. He awoke one night and thought he
saw a cat sitting on the end of his bed. He reached down, took up
his boot-jack and threw it at the cat, as he supposed. Instead,
a pitcher was smashed to atoms. Needless to add there was no cat
at all, which he realized, and he never took another drink of
liquor.

Senator Vest was not a very old man, but he was in poor health and
feeble for his years. One day he looked particularly forlorn,
sitting at his desk and leaning his head on his hands. I noticed
his dejected attitude, and said to Senator Morrill, who was then
eighty-five or eighty-six years old: "Go over and cheer up Vest."
Morrill did so in these words: "Vest, what is the matter? Cheer
up! Why, you are nothing but a boy."

Senator Vest retired from the Senate, and shortly thereafter died
at his home in Washington.

Allen G. Thurman, of Ohio, was another very prominent Democrat in
this Congress. He was one of the leading lawyers of the Senate,
ranking, probably, with Edmunds in this respect. He was chairman
of the Committee on the Judiciary for a brief period, was later
nominated for Vice-President of the United States, but was defeated
with the rest of the Democratic ticket.

Senator Eugene Hale, who retired from the Senate on his own motion,
March 4, 1911, was elected in 1881, and was always regarded as a
very strong man. It was unfortunate for the Senate and country
that Senator Hale determined to leave this body. He was chairman
of the Committee on Appropriations, and chairman of the Republican
caucus, in which latter capacity I succeeded him in April, 1911.
He w