bers do not wish to be accused of not earning their salaries. Many members are demagogues without knowing it. Their political lives are passed in studying the means of keeping their places, and everything available is resorted to for this purpose. If the community is a beer-drinking one, beer is the nectar of the gods, and the followers of Gambrinus are the jolliest and best men on earth, and those who interfere with their drinking are men who trample under foot the inalienable rights of American citizens. If the constituents want protection, those who oppose them are men who steal the bread out of the mouth of the republican citizen to give it to a foreigner. If they want free trade, their adversaries are aristocrats who enrich themselves at the expense of the poor, and destroy everything like equality and fair play. If the constituency is an Irish one, there never was such a country as Ireland, and the best blood in the United States came from there; the emigrants from Erin, with their hard, honest hands built the schoolhouse, the canal, the railway, and developed the commercial resources of the nation; and to their hands are confided its destinies. If they are Germans, the Vaterland has given to the world all it has of good and beautiful, and it is a proud privilege to have come from such a place; sauerkraut is an appetizing dish and beer is the friend of man; the men from Rhineland have been the pioneers of civilization, have cut down the wild forests, turned up the virgin soil, and developed the agricultural resources of the country. This particular district, in a word, is blessed in having a choice population. Often a member in the Congressional hall imagines that a stream of light beats upon him from all quarters of the Union, and that every word he utters is recorded in the national memory. This puts him on parade, and he goes over the interminable talk about his "record," and his services to his party and his country. The average member is especially prone to this vanity. A modest man with his meager attainments would never be where he is. Vanity, and ignorance of his own ignorance, have sent him up the political ladder to stand upon Congressional heights and expose his incapacity to make laws. I hold that this man is not a fair representative, in morality, ability, or education, of a nation of free citizens almost all of whom can read and write, and who are certainly as virtuous as any other on the globe. In these respects the legislators of France and England stand on a higher plane than the constituency. In portions of these two nations there are people who cannot speak the language of their country, who are steeped in ignorance, but whose interests are represented by trained, intelligent men. Here we have communities, reasonably intelligent and virtuous, misrepresented by men of tainted character and imperfect education, whose knowledge of the science of government is confined to organizing victory in the elections. To some Congressmen the most painful condition in political life is to be let alone. If praise cannot be had, censure is better than indifference. To be named in the printed proceedings as introducing a resolution or even presenting a petition, is something to be sought for on every occasion, but to be the author of remarks which produce an effect approximating to a sensation, is happiness. The Congressional Globe is the Valhalla which ershrines their names for posterity. To two or three of them, notoriety is sleep and nourishment, and if newspaper men were to make a compact never to mention their names, they would probably go into mental and physical decline. Once in a while they denounce the press, which returns the fire, and thus unwittingly contributes to their happiness. In any discussion where sensation is to be had, they thrust themselves forward and endeavor to take a leading part. They love agitation as the petrel loves the storm, and as soon as it begins they are inevitably at hand. Other members with the same ambition for notoriety, but less ability, are obliged to content themselves with minor results, such as rising to a personal explanation in reference to an attack in the columns of the Broad Ax of Freedom or the Voice of Roaring Run. Such an attack, with its attendant vindication, is sweet to these panting souls. The style of much of the speaking shows that the prayer-meeting and the playhouse have been its nurseries. Those who have taken play-actors as models, are inflated, emphatic and painfully slow. Such members say, "Mr. Speaker, I ask leave to introduce a bill," as if the utterance were a startling truth that had never burst upon the world before. They have the theatri cal gags and vulgarities, and say che-yild for child, me for my, with much basso profundo, swelling and posing. Such pretension promises much, and always falls short. Those who have taken the class-leader and the preacher as their models, are also unpleasant speakers. There is, and has been, a tendency in certain of the priesthood to run into a nasal sniffling tone in the exercise of spiritual functions, under the mistaken notion that it adds solemnity to the words. This influence is very perceptible in Congressional speaking, and sometimes becomes so marked that we expect a speaker to reach the climax, raise himself on his toes with a tremulous shake and pronounce the "Yea, ver-i-ly" of the Praise-God Barebone of Puritan memory. and manner took away the little man's faculty of speech, he thrust the box into his pocket and sat down without saying a word. In the same way, the big men in Congress occasionally bear down upon the small lean ones, and if they cannot take away their speech, they do sometimes disconcert them with their ponderous ways and utterances. In the operation of the five and ten minute rules of the House there is some thing savage. As soon as the allotted time expires, though the member should be in the midst of a sentence, down goes the gavel, and the mutilated speech passes into the world, like the body of Richard III., half made up-born before its time. To try to invest it with some symmetry, by adding another phrase, is seldom attempted before a frowning Speaker, who stands with the uplifted emblem of his office in the rôle of inexorable Fate. Not all that a man says, when he has the floor, goes down in the Congressional record; nor all that is said about him. A portion of his speech is interlarded with side questions and replies, of a somewhat It is rare that any member enunciates familiar character. A. throws out his arm a distinct individual opinion on any imporand shouts, "Mr. Speaker," and when for- tant subject under controversy until he has tunate enough to obtain the Olympian nod felt the home pulse. Some argue that this of the gavel-holder, does not usually get in. is right-that the representative should more than three or four sentences before regard himself as an agent only, employed B. says to him in a tone that is ostensibly by a Congressional district to carry out sotto voce, but is loud enough to be heard in certain instructions. The prevalence of the galleries, that he ought to take in such this opinion sinks individuality; and when and such a point, while C. tells him in the boldness and blustering are seen, they are same tone that he is wasting the time of pretty sure to be backed up by popular the House, whereupon A. makes answer home feeling. This course is so common and retort, to all of which the Congression- that any departure from it is remarkable, al reporter shuts his ears. Some members as in the case of General Butler, who, in make a specialty of flanking with these defiance of public opinion, advocated the hand-grenades of speech, to embarrass the increase of Congressional salaries. Mr. speaker, but there are certain members Butler was the rat that belled the cat, and, whose resources in the way of rejoinder are in doing so, exhibited a temerity very unwell known, to whom they give a wide berth. usual in the House, however unworthy the In the speaking of Congress, it is worthy act. act. A more notable instance is that of of remark, that a great body and promi- Thaddeus Stevens, who, in acts and nent stomach lend a certain weight to the speeches, consulted his own views, rewords pronounced. The dapper man with gardless of those who sent him to Conan insignificant voice is thus at a disadvan- gress. He was too formidable to be optage, for let him speak as he will, his words posed, and his people followed him like a do not have the importance of the man child. It would have been impossible to who delivers his over a great abdomen, keep a man like him within the limits of supposing them to be of something like a Congressional district. In the House, equal talents. This was illustrated in the there never was before nor since such an presentation of a gold snuff-box to Lord exercise of individual power. RepubliJeffreys, a man of great mental stature but can Representatives were driven in leash small in the flesh. He who presented the by one man; and if any one, impatient of box was large, compared to the diminu- the rein, broke from it, he was pretty sure tive nobleman, and of dignified manners; to get back to his place with an apology after pronouncing the usual compliments, to the great Jehu, who accepted it with he handed the box to the nobleman with the grim, epigrammatic humor for which a grand bow the theatrical ease of word he was famous. Speaker Blaine has something of this boldness in his relations with his constituency, as well as his party. He leads his constituents, and is probably the ablest speaker in the Republican party. He has been growing mentally within the last few years, and is remarkably quick and decisive in debate. He is possibly an abler man than Thaddeus Stevens was; but he dces not entirely persuade us that he speaks from long-settled convictions, as the great representative from Pennsylvania did. If Stevens sometimes resorted to parliamentary twists and turns, we always knew that the end to be attained was worthy. In his legislative experience, Mr. Blaine has measured himself with his contemporaries, and he is conscious of his superior ability, and this impels him, at times, to something approaching to tyranny in presiding over the Chamber. Comparatively young, full of vigor and ambition, the probabilities are that before long he will be the acknowledged leader of the Republican party out of the Chamber as well as in it. His most prominent rival, with, perhaps, the exception of Senator Morton, is now at the Court of St. James; and when he returns, Mr. Blaine will probably be so far ahead that the diplomate will never catch up. vent him from entering actively into the Per In the Liberal camp, the prominent group which presents itself is composed of Banks, Trumbull-neither reëlected-Schurz, and Sumner. To one of these especially the nation owes a debt of gratitude not less than what it owes to Lincoln, Seward, Greeley, Grant, Farragut, and General Sherman. Sumner's moral, as well as his physical nature, has been affected by late events, which, with encroaching age, will incapacitate him from ever resuming the place he formerly occupied as a leader. The egotism of his character and the inflation of his speeches are easily overlooked in consideration of the man's unimpeachable integrity. From the beginning he took his part seriously as an American statesman, penetrated with a sense of responsibility, still further heightened by egotism There are others who are regarded by their friends as neck and neck with the Speaker, and amongst these are Dawes, Conkling, Edmunds, and Bingham; but this opinion is not generally shared. The House has never been so little without a leader as now; but so far as it is led, the honor is shared by Dawes and Bingham, both of respectable attainments, but not of commanding ability. Mr. Bingham not being reëlected, the presumption is that Mr. Dawes will aspire to undivided leadership in the House, the next Congress. He is to retain his position as head of the Ways and Means Committee, which, with his talents, will continue to render him a conspicuous representative, but will not. make him a successful rival of Mr. Blaine. Senator Edmunds is as capable as Speaker not an egotism that ever had aggrandizeBlaine, if not more so. He is the type of ment of a personal or material kind in a large class of New England men, his view, but simply an admiration of his own nature being hard and dry, and his voice capacity and of the important trust which nasal. He lacks that breadth and sym- fell to his lot in shaping the policy of the pathy essential to national popularity, country. The political sagacity which which, for example, are such common turns, twists, and doubles through years traits in the Western man. Senator Mor- of legislative life, to present a respectton's physical disability will probably pre-able record, is foreign to his nature. His speeches may be objected to, embellished and elaborated as they are; but they have been delivered with the best English pronunciation spoken in either House; and the words, reasonably effective in themselves, have been rendered more so by the spotless character of the man who stood behind them. The other leading Liberal, Mr. Shurz, is the philosopher of the Senate. His speeches on the science of government are interesting. It is a relief to turn from those who never get out of the sound in the mill about carrying elections and pressing for appropriations-to a scientist like this, who eloquently discusses that most difficult question of the world, the governing of men. He is young, and if the drifting political elements concentrate into combined opposition, he will probably be one of its champions-for there is still much work left in him. There is, perhaps, less talent in the Democratic party of Congress now than there ever was before. It has no one in the House equal to Blaine, Dawes, Bingham, or Butler, nor any one in the Senate equal to Morton and Edmunds, or the Liberals, Sumner and Schurz. The most prominent group of Democrats in the House is composed of James B. Beck, George W. Morgan, Charles A. Eldridge, Henry D. Foster and Fernando Wood, and of these Mr. Beck is probably the ablest. He is an energetic, argumentative speaker, and was more conspicuous during the last session than any other member of his party in the House. In the Senate, Mr. Thurman is the only Democrat who, in point of talent, appears on a footing with the leading men of the other parties. He, like Mr. Bingham and others that might be named, turns an idea inside out, and shows it under every possible light, until the process becomes wearisome. This thin spreading is common to both bodies, a little being made to go a great way. The man the furthest removed from this kind of speaking, when in the House, was Mr. Schenck, whose thoughts came from him chunky and suggestive-a man full of ideas, but sparing of words. In conclusion, by way of summary, it may be said that in Congress there is now a growing taste for silent or laconic men, or those who are given to exact statements of facts and figures; that the days of imagination and thrill are over, and that henceforth the national legislature is to be more a place for the transaction of business than for talking. Into thy inmost soul, and see if thou And consecrate so long to purpose high, And live as we live? Canst thou buy and sell, Work and get gain, and eat, and drink, and sleep, Sin and repent, as these thy brethren do? Unto what name less sacred answerest thou Hanging like Him upon the dreadful tree, GLIMPSES OF TEXAS-I: A VISIT TO SAN ANTONIO. GALUSHA A. GROW, once the noted speaker of our national House of Representatives, and now the energetic and successful manager of a railroad in the Lone Star State has changed the once memorable words, "Go to Texas!" from a malediction into a beneficent recommendation. The process was simple: he placed the curt phrase at the head of one of those flaming posters which railway companies affect, and associated it with such ideas of lovely climate and prospective prosperity, that people forthwith began to demand if it were indeed true that they had for the last twenty years been fiercely dismissing their enemies into the very Elysian Fields, instead of hurling them down to Hades. The world is beginning to learn something of the fair land which the adventurous Frenchmen of the seventeenth century overran, only to have it wrested from them by the cunning and intrigue of the Spaniard; in which the Franciscan friars toiled, proselyting Indians, and building massive garrison missions; which Aaron Burr dreamed of as his empire of the southwest; and into which the " Republican" army of the North marched, giving presage of future American domination. The dread pirates of the Gulf made the islands of the Texan coast their retreats and strongholds; Austin and his brave fellow-colonists rescued Texas from the suicidal policy of the Mexican government; the younger Austin accepted it as his patrimony, and elevated it from the degraded and useless condition in which the provincial governors held it; it spurned from its side its fellow-slave, Coahuila, and broke its own shackles, throwing them in the Mexican tyrant Guerrero's face; it nourished a small but noble band of mighty men, who made the names of San Felipe, of Goliad, of the Alamo, of Washington, of San Jacinto, immortal. It crushed the might of Santa Anna, the Napoleon of the West; it wrested its freedom from the hard hands of an unforgiving foe, and maintained it, as an isolated republic, commanding the sympathy and respect of the world; it placed the names of Houston, of Travis, of Fannin, of Bowie, of Milam, of Crockett, upon the roll of American heroes and faithful soldiers; and brought to the United States a marriagegift of two hundred and thirty-seven thousand square miles of fertile land. The world is beginning to know something of this gigantic south-western commonwealth, which can nourish a population of fifty millions; whose climate is as charming as that of Italy; whose roses bloom, whose birds sing, all winter long; whose soil can bring forth all the fruits of the earth, and whose noble coast-line is broken by rivers which have wandered two thousand miles in and out among the Texan mountains and plains. The land is a region of strange contrasts in peoples and places: you step from the civilization of the railway junction in Denison to the civilization of Mexico of the seventeenth century in certain sections of San Antonio; you find black, sticky land in northern Texas, incomparably fertile; and sterile plains, which give the cattle but scant living, along the great stretches between the San Antonio and the Rio Grande. You may ride in one day from odorous, moss-grown forests, where everything is of tropic fullness, into a section where the mesquite and chaparral dot the gaunt prairie here and there; or from the sealoving populations of Galveston and from her thirty-mile beach, to peoples who have never seen a mast or a wave, and whose main idea of water is that it is something difficult to find and agreeable to taste if one is exceedingly thirsty. The State has been much and unduly maligned in many respects; has been made a by-word and reproach, whereas it should be a glory and a boast. It has been guilty of the imperfections of a frontier community, but has rapidly thrown the majority of them aside, even while the outer world supposed it growing more and more away from what it should be. Like some strange, unknown fruit, it has ripened in the obscurity of its rind, until, bursting its covering, it stands disclosed as something of passing sweetness, whereas all men had willingly believed it bitter and nauseous. Texas has suffered much odious criticism at at the hands of people who knew very little of its actual condition; border tales have been magnified into generalities; the peo ple of the North and of Europe have been |