“There, my dear,” said he, “is a sauce for you to try.”
With one look at the contents of the package, which she evidently recognized, she exclaimed: “Pshaw! That’s no sauce; that’s fish--didn’t you know it?”
The next day the Court met again for consultation, and on the following Monday handed down a decision overruling the customs officers and sustaining the importer’s appeal.
Leaving the court-room and continuing northward, we come to the present Hall of the Senate. It is smaller than the present Hall of Representatives and also cleaner looking and more comfortable. When Congress is in full session, the contrast may be extended further so as to include what we hear as well as what we see, for there is little likeness between the two houses in the matter of orderliness of procedure. But that’s another story, which will keep. It was from this chamber that the Senators from the seceding States took their departure in 1860 and 1861. For years afterward the first request of every visiting stranger was to be shown the seats formerly occupied by these men. As long as the old doorkeeper of the Senate, Captain Bassett, lived, he was reputed to be the only person who knew the history of every desk on the floor. Whether he transmitted this knowledge to any of his assistants before his death, I cannot say; but more than once he saved some of the furniture from injury at the hands of wanton vandals or curio collectors.
During the early days of the Civil War, a party of Northern zouaves, passing through the city on their way to the front, entered the Senate Hall during a recess and tried to identify Davis’s desk. They frankly avowed their purpose of destroying, if possible, the last trace of the Confederate President’s connection with the United States Government; but Bassett refused to be coaxed, bribed, or bullied into revealing the information they wished. Their persistency presently aroused his fears lest they might come back later and renew their attempt in his absence; so he resorted to diplomacy and made them a little speech, reminding them that, no matter what Mr. Davis might have done to provoke their indignation, the desk at which he had sat was not his property, but that of the Government which they had come South to defend. His reasoning had its effect, and, admitting that he was right, they went away peaceably.