My social memory of Mr. and Mrs. Polk is meagre. He was not an impressive man at first, but his kind, even deferential, but reserved manner won upon the person honored with his attention. He impressed me as a man innately single-minded, of simple tastes, and unimpugnable honor. His health was evidently not strong, and the duties of his of fice seemed to wear greatly upon him. Mrs. Polk was very decorous and civil in her manner to all. My acquaintance with her was very slight.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE SENATE IN 1845.

THE personnel of the House was at this time not so notable as that of the Senate; it was more noisy, less distinguished, if one might so say, than when ex-President Adams was there and the two Ingersolls, besides many others who became notable afterward. Judge Stephen A. Douglas was just beginning to figure in the public eye as a leading man of pronounced opinions. Mr. Lincoln, I have heard since, was also there.

Vice-President George Mifflin Dallas presided over the Senate with matchless grace and temper, and it was at that time an august body composed of men of great dignity, intellect, and integrity.

The Senators wore full dress on the floor of the Senate, or such ceremonious garments as marked their respect for the place. The older men wore silk stockings and low shoes. Mr. Dallas always wore a spotless white cravat. He was tall and well proportioned, his eyes and eyebrows were quite black, and his hair, which was inclined to curl, was snowy

white. There was a certain nice, delicate, sense of harmony and propriety about everything he did. For instance, if he wrote a note it was without erasures, placed in the most graceful manner on the paper, and sealed with care. He considered the peculiarities of every one as worthy of his notice, and never mortified the sensibilities of the most uneducated.

It was a little thing, but it showed his polite consideration for others. One of the Senators from Arkansas always called the State Arkansas, the other pronounced it Arkansaw. As cach rose to address the chair, Mr. Dallas acknowledged the salutation with the Senator's preferred pronunciation. He bowed his stately head and said, "The Senator from Arkansas," or the "Senator from Arkansaw." No matter how hot the debate, he always followed this rule. Once a Senator, perhaps tired of hearing Mr. Dallas called just, made a most offensive attack upon him; but the Vice-President neither called him to order nor evinced the least consciousness of being the object of animadversion, and it seemed to discomfort his assailant sadly, who finally sat down. His "politeness was benevolence in small things."

Mr. Benton was a man of rare personal dignity, and he never descended from the

plane on which he had established himself. He was of medium height; but was, when I saw him, an old man, and had become so stout that it subtracted from his height somewhat. He had a rather swelling oratorical manner, but had always something wherewith to maintain the dignity of his tone. Woe betide the man against whom he had a prejudice if, in an unwary hour, a statement unwarranted by indisputably attested facts had been made in contravention of any of his theories. In such a case one little page after another hied away to the library with small squares of paper memoranda for the librarian; each one returned with a ponderous tome, until sometimes, especially when Mr. Clay was speaking, breast high before him on his desk rose a rampart of formidable books. Statesmen's manuals, Jefferson's letters, geographies of almost all countries, maps, antiquated books of traveleverything poured aliment into this great and retentive mind, and served as a weapon of offence or defence. Everything he knew was at once available, because his repose of mind never permitted him to be flurried or disconcerted. He had reasoned out his policy, and was entirely sincere in his opinions.

As soon as his antagonist took his seat, Mr. Benton arose, and with a courtly salutation to the Speaker, and one scarcely less so

to the doomed one, he began as one would hunt a hare. He took each ill-considered postulate and chased it over heavy ground until nearly overcome, and then he set on his authorities in full cry. With his hand upon the first book of the formidable collection before him, in most gentle tones he demonstrated that within those covers was the testimony of a patriot, an actor in the very event so strangely, so hideously misunderstood (with a little deferential bow and wave of the hand) by the gentleman. After the first blow he warmed to the work, and a finer display of varied reading in old and rare books, of statesmen's lore, of burning eloquence, keen satire, and exalted romanesque declamation could hardly be imagined. 'Friends, countrymen, and lovers," would have seemed a natural invocation from him, and most people gladly listened that they might hear. I did. He had a habit of talking to himself as he walked home, and Grund, a Hessian reporter of the Senate, described him in a letter to the New York Herald thus: "I saw Mr. Benton walking up the avenue to-day, keeping up a gentle remonstrance with himself for being so much greater than the rest of the world."

It made the very women feel profound who heard him, and was for them a cheap and charming education in our governmental his