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Question in less than no time.
Monroe Edwards would have admired the dexterity and celerity of the performance.
All that could be obtained was a vote by Tellers, and ninety-four voted in favor to twenty-two against—a bare quorum in all, a great many being then in the Senate—none, I believe, at that moment in the “extra” refectory.
But had no such refectory been opened in either end of the Capitol, I believe the personal collisions which disgraced the Nation through its Representatives would not have occurred.
I shall not speak further of them—I would not mention them at all if they were not unhappily notorious already.
March 6th.
Mr. Greeley was one of the three thousand persons who attended the Inauguration ball, which he describes as ‘a sweaty, seething, sweltering jam, a crowd of duped foregatherers from all creation.’
‘I went,’ he says,
to see the new President, who had not before come within my contracted range of vision, and to mark the reception accorded to him by the assembled thousands.
I came to gaze on stately heads, not nimble feet, and for an hour have been content to gaze on the flitting phantasmagoria of senatorial brows and epauletted shoulders—of orators and brunettes, office-seekers and beauties.
I have had “something too much of this, ” and lo!
‘the hour of hours’ has come—the buzz of expectation subsides into a murmur of satisfaction—the new President is descending the grand stairway which terminates in the ball-room, and the human mass forms in two deep columns to receive him. Between these, General Taylor, supported on either hand, walks through the long saloon and back through other like columns, bowing and greeting with kind familiarity those on this side and on that, paying especial attention to the ladies as is fit, and everywhere welcomed in turn with the most cordial good wishes.
All wish him well in his new and arduous position, even those who struggled hardest to prevent his reaching it.
But, as at the Inauguration, there is the least possible enthusiasm.
Now and then a cheer is attempted, but the result is so nearly a failure that the daring leader in the exploit is among the first to laugh at the miscarriage.
There is not a bit of heart in it.
“They don't seem to cheer with much unction,” I remarked to a Taylor original.
“Ne-e-o, they don't cheer much,” he as faintly replied; “there is a good deal of doubt as to the decorum of cheering at a social ball.”
True enough: the possibility of indecorum was sufficient to check the impulse to cheer, and very few passed the barrier.
The cheers “stuck in the throat,” like Macbeth's Amen, and the proprieties of the occasion were well cared for.
But just imagine Old Hal walking down that staircase, the just inaugurated
