. Senator Van Wyck offered
an amendment to the bill, and was talking in favor of the amendment,
when Sawyer became a little alarmed lest the bill was going to be
beaten. He turned his back to the clerk, and said in a tone of
voice that could be distinctly heard:

"If you will stop your damned yawp I will accept your amendment."

Van Wyck merely said, "All right." The amendment was adopted, and
the bill passed.

As is quite the custom in the disposal of new members, I was
appointed a member of the Committee on Pensions--really the only
important committee appointment I received during my first service
in the Senate. I naturally felt very liberal toward the old
soldiers, and it seemed that every case that was referred to me
was a worthy one, and that a liberal pension should be allowed.
I became a little uneasy lest I might be too liberal, and I went
to Sawyer, knowing that he was a man of large wealth, seeking his
advice about it.

He said, and I have been guided by that advice largely ever since:
"You need not worry; you cannot very well make a mistake in allowing
liberal pensions to the soldier boys. The money will get into
circulation and come back into the treasury very soon; so go ahead
and do what you think is right in the premises; and there will be
no trouble."

Senator Sawyer retired from the Senate voluntarily at a ripe old
age. He was largely instrumental in selecting as his successor,
one of the greatest lawyers and ablest statesmen who has ever served
in that body, of whom I shall speak later, my distinguished friend,
the Hon. John C. Spooner.

In the Forty-eighth Congress the Democrats had a majority in the
House and the Republicans a majority in the Senate, and as is always
the case when such a situation prevails, little or no important
legislation was enacted.

I entered the Senate having three objects in view: First, the
control of Interstate Commerce; second, the stamping out of polygamy;
third, the construction of the Hennepin Canal.

I was not quite as modest as I have since advised younger Senators
to be, because I see by the _Record_ that on January 11, 1884, a
little more than a month after I had entered the Senate, I made an
extended address on the subject of Territorial Government for Utah,
particularly referring to polygamy. I was especially bitter in
what I said against the Mormons and the Mormon Church. I used such
expressions as these:

"There is scarcely a page of thei