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“The Lord have mercy on us all!” she cried aloud. “To think that old rascal’d go out on a spree! He’d better of stayed in the country where he belonged.”

It was the next morning that the House received a shock which loosed another riot, but one of a kind different from that which greeted Representative Rollinson’s vote on the “Breaker.” The reading-clerk had sung his way through an inconsequent bill; most of the members were buried in newspapers, gossiping, idling, or smoking in the lobbies, when a loud, cracked voice was heard shrilly demanding recognition.

“Mr. Speaker!” Every one turned with a start. There was Uncle Billy, on his feet, violently waving his hands at the Speaker. “Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker!” His dress was disordered and muddy; his eyes shone with a fierce, absurd, liquorish light; and with each syllable that he uttered his beard wagged to an unspeakable effect of comedy. He offered the most grotesque spectacle ever seen in that hall–a notable distinction.

For a moment the House sat in paralytic astonishment. Then came an awed whisper from a Republican: “Has the old fool really found his voice?”

“No, he’s drunk,” said a neighbour. “I guess he can afford it, after his vote yesterday!”

“Mister Speaker! Mister Speaker!”

The cracked voice startled the lobbies. The hangers-on, the typewriters, the janitors, the smoking members came pouring into the chamber and stood, transfixed and open-mouthed.

“Mister Speaker!”

Then the place rocked with the gust of laughter and ironical cheering that swept over the Assembly, Members climbed upon their chairs and on desks, waving handkerchiefs, sheets of foolscap, and waste-baskets. “Hear ‘im! He-ear ‘im!” rang the derisive cry.

The Speaker yielded in the same spirit and said:

“The Gentleman from Wixinockee.”

A semi-quiet followed and the cracked voice rose defiantly:

“That’s who I am! I’m the Gentleman from Wixinockee an’ I stan’ here to defen’ the principles of the Democratic party!”

The Democrats responded with violent hootings, supplemented by cheers of approval from the Republicans. The high voice out-shrieked them all: “Once a Democrat, always a Democrat! I voted Dem’cratic tick’t forty year, born a Democrat an’ die a Democrat. Fellow sizzens, I want to say to you right here an’ now that principles of Dem’cratic party saved this country a hun’erd times from Republican mal-‘diministration an’ degerdation! Lemme tell you this: you kin take my life away but you can’t say I don’ stan’ by Dem’cratic party, mos’ glorious party of Douglas an’ Tilden, Hen’ricks, Henry Clay, an’ George Washin’ton. I say to you they hain’t no other party an’ I’m member of it till death an’ Hell an’ f’rever after, so help me God!”

He smote the desk beside him with the back of his hand, using all his strength, skinning his knuckles so that the blood dripped from them, unnoticed. He waved both arms continually, bending his body almost double and straightening up again, in crucial efforts for emphasis. All the old jingo platitudes that he had learned from campaign speakers throughout his life, the nonsense and brag and blat, the cheap phrases, all the empty balderdash of the platform, rushed to his incoherent lips.

The lord of misrule reigned at the end of each sentence, as the members sprang again upon the chairs and desks, roaring, waving, purple with laughter. The Speaker leaned back exhausted in his chair and let the gavel rest. Spectators, pages, galleries whooped and howled with the members. Finally the climax came.

“I want to say to you just this here,” shrilled the cracked voice, “an’ you can tell the Republican party that I said so, tell ’em straight from me, an’ I hain’t goin’ back on it; I reckon they know who I am, too; I’m a man that’s honest–I’m as honest as the day is long, I am–as honest as the day is long–“

He was interrupted by a loud voice. “Yes,” it cried, “when that day is the twenty-first of December!”