Catoctin clarion. [volume] (Mechanicstown, Md.) 1871-1940, 1913-08-28


ing on its midnight death. Somehow,
whenever l think of the legislature, l
think of that Legislature, and when
ever my mind conceives the state
house it isn't pictured to me as stand
Ing there on the hill, stately In the
sunshine, but as it appeared that night
as | walked over from the Leland,
with the clouds flying low over its
dome. The lower floors were dark
and still as sepulchres, and the mes
senger boys who came over from the
Western Union, now and then, remind
ed me of ghosts as they went by, their
heels dragging on the marble floors
of the corridor. A light was burning
in the governors office though the ola
man himself, l knew, was over at the
mansion, pacing the floor Of the IL
brary and cursing with classic curses
We were going to try that night to
pass the Bailey bill over his veto.
"But the third floor blazed with
electric lights, and the big dome was
full of noisy echoes. The senate Kept
its coat on--you know how they
mimic decorum over there-but the
house was in its shirtseeves. huddled
like pack of wolves around the
speakers dais, with faces ripe with
whisky, shaking its fists under the
umbrella of cigar smoke. Every fel-
low was trying to get his bill passed
in the last hour of the session-you
know what 1t is. Hank?"
"Oah, yes" replied Jennings. but
'taln't nothin' to what t used to be
under the OIL constitution. Wed stack
a pile O. them ere private acts up on
the clerks desk, an pass 'em all
oncet 18th whoop. Them as the
days-but that as fore your time
"Those must have been good old
days" assented the lobbyist, Tor the
gang"
81 reckon! A feller could a done
business In them days! or John Nd
better left the OF constitution alone
1t as good enough. But there as
passion fer change right after the
war"
The lobbyist politely nodded concur
renee in this view and continued:
Some of the members clamberen
on to their desks, filling the air with
oaths, ink bottles, and hurtling books
with rattling leaves. Sometimes an
iron weight sheathed in paper whizzed
by on a vindictive mission, and one
man made an Egyptian nigger-killer
hurled
their copies Of the revised statutes
it was the first use they had ever
found for them. Once in "hlle
some one would toss batch of print
ed bills to the ceiling, where they set
the glass prisms of the chandeliers
iingling, and then fell like autumn
leaves, a shower of dead pledges and
withered hopes. And out of all the
hubbub rose a steady roar
Like at a lynchin' bee" assisted
Jennings.
Exactly" assented Baldwin, who
had never seen lynching. There
were drunken howls and vacuous
laughs. and yet we could hear through
1t all the hoarse voice Of the clerk his
throat so heated that you could see
the vapor of his breath, as you can an
orators, or a wood-chopper's in win
ter, rapidly intoning senate bills on
third reading. The pages were grow
ing needless and impertinent. The
newspaper correspondents, their dis
patches on the wires, puffed their Gig
arettes in professional unconcern, and
awaited happenings worthy of late bull
letins. The older members, who had
been through the mill many times be-
fore, lounged low In their seats. One
could see, above their desks, only
their heads and heels. The speaker,
old 'Zeke himself, was in the chair,
suave as ever but growing caustlc.
He had splintered his sounding-board
early In the evening, and had taken
to tapping perfunctorily his walnut
desk with his little inadequate gavel.
And yet he and the older members
and the newspaper men would cast
occasionally an anxious glance at the
clock, and an expectant one at the
big doors.
"As I sat there on the old, red
lounge under the speakers fiag-draped
canopy, | noticed Henderson OF
Greene, standing away back under the
galleries on the Democratic side, eylng
the proceedings with the same mys-
terious stare that had never left him
since he had been sworn in. AS | have
said, | had never spoken to the fell
low, but | had always felt a pity for
him-he impressed me as man who
had been stunned by repeated raps
of bad luck Along toward the end or
the session he had brought his wife
up from Greene County to the capital.
She had that tired look that country
women have. Her face was scanned,
her cheeks hollow; her back was bent
in a bow, and she walked hurr1edly,
anxiously along in her tapping skirts
beside her tall and somber husband.
She had never been away from home
before, and the boys had many laugh
over her wonder at the trolleycars
and her fears of the elevators In the
state house-though, for my part, l
could see nothing ludicrous In 1t all.
She stayed three or four days and
they went everywhere, out to Oak
Ridge to see Lncoln's tomb, over to
Eighth Street to visit his old home
stead, up to the Geological Museum
where the motheaten stuffed animals