Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-01-03
"VAGABOND LIFE
THE LIKES AND PERSONAL ATTACHMENTS
OF NATIONAL LEGISLATORS.
The Effect of the Congressional Wife on
the Congressional Husband
The Holiday Recess.
WAsn1soroN. December %. 1879.

WASHINGTON, December %, 1879.
The Congressional recess has begun, and
we are at leisure to- review the opening
work of those bright guardians of the public
veal. The Post, the Democratic daily of
this city, grows statistical in this morn
ings issue, and says The Senate met on
thirteen different days, and the House on
fourteen days. The Senate devoted ex-
actly twenty hours and thirty-six minutes
to business, and the House thirty-i five
hours and four minutes. Over two hun
dred bills and joint resolutions were intro
duced in the Senate, and over seven hun
bred in the House. There were nearly two
hundred petitions presented in the Senate,
and five hundred in the House.
THE HISTORY OF PREVIOUS CONGRESSES
Will hardly show such record as the
passage by the House of three appropria-
ton bills, and the reporting of fourth, in
this brief space of time. The Senate
passed one of the appropriation bills PEN
sions) which was sent to it by the House.
The latter body will take up the Consular
and Diplomatic bill Immediately after the
recess; but judge that the report on the
revision OF the rules, presented by Mr..
Blackburn yesterday from the Committee
on Rules, will claim as early at
tention. The Speaker is ex-officio Chair
man of this select committee, which in the
present Congress is composed, besides him,
of Messrs. Blackburn, of Kentucky,
Stephens, of George, Garfield, of Ohio, and
Frye, of Maine. OF the present l66 rules,
60 either In whole or in part were adopted
prior to 1900. In the sixth Congress, end
ing in 1901, there were l4l Representa-
tives-one for every SO, 900 inhabitants
instead of 293 as now, one for every 1885,
600. In that Congress 29S bills were in
troduced in the last Congress there were
$3.50, and 10, 467 petitions. 1t can easily
be seen what receptacle of time honored
but out-grown curiosities this list of rules
must have become. Some of them are con-
Trajectory of others, many have died a nat
ural death, but are embalmed among the
later and living ones. By abbreviation,
Encouragement and consolidation, the COM
mittee-a majority of whom were at work
before the session opened-have reduced
the number to forty-five. There will be
an opportunity for much interesting discus
sion in the considering of this report, and
it will be all the more pleasant because
non-partisan in its nature.
A LooKER-oN
Grows tired of always being a partisan
The Republican party, in its prominent
membership, adopts some tactics cannot
conscientiously approve; and there are in
dividual Democrats to whom | am dis
posed to concede reservation in the
kingdom of heaven-with territorial priv
leges at least. In both houses of Congress
personal friendships often override party
lines. Hon. Proctor Knott, Chairman of
the Judiciary Committee. strict partisan
and the assailant of Mr.. Blaine. has a
warm friendship for Mr.. Frye, Blaine s
fduS debates, which is fully reciprocated.
In offering me Christmas greetings on the
street to-day, Mr.. hnott said pleasantly,
though no stranger to my Republican pro-
cLvities, "Tell - that you count on me
as one of your best friendsin Washington. y
In the Senate, Mr.. Thurman, of Ohio, and
Judge Edmunds, of Vermont, are close
personal friends. They have served to-
gether on the Judiciary Committee for
years, and each has high appreciation of
the others integrity and legal powers
believe Edmunds will feel privately sorry
when a Republican succeeds Thurman in
1881. Who it is to be will soon be known,
but doubtless General Garfield. He comes
from the right part of the State geographic
ca1lI baip crfr ba NNae+ar,, d l.
Pendleton, who occupies Sherman's old
seat more recently filled by Stanley
Matthews-is from Cincinnati Also his
long and eminent service in the House
would seem to entitle him to promotion ;
and further, his district is full of
INTELLIGENT AND AMBITIOUS MEN
Who want his seat in Congress. Yet this
fact remains interchangeable Garfield is
a selfish and arrogant maA, one who needs
to be held responsible to the people at least
once in two years. He chafes under it,
but it is salutary bit and bride for him.
He is not quite all want my Senator to
be. He is really better declaimer than
statesman he has more brain than back
bone. Worst of all, his admirers have be-
gun fooling him into the belief that he can
some day be President. Nothing spoils a
man more surely. Said Senator Chandler
on his last visit to Washington, to an en-
thusiastic friend who had caught up the
suggestion of the sturdy Michigander's
name as not improbable candidate, and
written him congratulatory letter about
it: What did you write me that id
balderdash for? I'm ne Presidential can
didate. Nothing unhinges man like that.
| want tim while l live, and I'm going to
have it" Mr.. Garfield is often referred to
as having been Disciple (Campbellite)
preacher. He never was; but, as lay
man in that Church, he sometimes took
part in its religious meetings when Princ-
pal of Disciple Academy at Hiram, o.
In referring above to
PERSONAL PREFERENCES
That overlap party lines, l might as well
have admitted that as fascinating con-
versationalist l rank Hon. Jere Black, that
uncompromising veteran in the Democratic
ranks, above all other men have met in
Washington. He comes here on business
before the Supreme Court as often as once
a month, and always stops at the Ebbitt
Sometimes he beguiles an idle half-hour
by telling me the things crave to hear
about the Washington of his earlier years,
during and before his Secretaryship of
State; and the traditional anecdotes heard
in his youth about the statesmen of an
elder day. He has stately gallantry that
reminds one of those full-length, ruffied-
shirted portraits by Gilbert Stuart. 1t
makes our newer men seem crude and I'M
finished, to listen to this lion hearted sage
of society-since in appearance he is tall
and robust, with bushy gray eyebrows
overltanging two shrew blue eyes, and a
shock of hair to match the eyebrows that so
successfully counterfeits nature that it
seems invidious to call it wig He has a
strong profile, long in outline, and ending
in a firm mouth and chin. Mr.. Justice
Miller, often called the ablest man on the
Supreme Bench, says that no other man
pleads before that bar whom it is such an
intellectual treat to hear-that an argu-
ment from him is finer in language than an
essay of Macaulay's. His mingled enco-