Читать книгу The Olivia Letters - Emily Edson Briggs - Страница 14

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Messrs. Nye and Doolittle Cross Blades in Ideas and Arguments.

Washington, January 26, 1868.

Again the Senate chamber recalls the early days of the rebellion, or rather the last stormy winter before its culmination. The galleries are densely crowded; the voice of eloquence is heard ringing in clarion notes through the hall; but in place of the handsome, sneering face of Breckinridge as presiding officer, rare old Ben Wade rises, like a sun of promise, to light up the troubled waters, and to help warn the ship of the Republic off the rocky shore. Scarcely a drop in the river of time since haughty Wigfall arose, and, with right hand clenched defiantly in the face of the Republican side, his flaming eye resting upon Charles Sumner, declared that he owed no allegiance to the Government of the United States. It was the forked flames licking the marble column, for Senator Sumner sat calm and immovable as the figure of Fate. Gone, too, is Davis, the man of destiny; and Toombs, the swaggering braggart, with silver-voiced Benjamin, the only human being endowed with the same melodious, flute-like tongue that bewitched our dear first mother. And yet there is treason enough left to act as leaven in case Senator Doolittle and the President succeed in introducing it into the loaf of reconstruction.

To-day two of the most warlike as well as two of the most powerful men in the Senate have been engaged in real battle; but instead of muscle against muscle, the air has been filled with javelins of arguments and ideas. Let the pen be content with describing the two combatants—Senator Doolittle, of Wisconsin, and Senator Nye, of Nevada.

The battle, like Massachusetts, speaks for itself. Senator Doolittle, the President’s spirit of darkness, bears the same relation to the human race that a bull-dog does to the canine species. His arguments are tough and sharp as a row of glittering teeth, and would do the same horrible execution if the President and small party of barking Democracy at his heels were strong enough to tell him “to go in and win.” Rather above the medium height, built for strength, like a Dutch clipper, with close cropped hair and broad, projecting lower jaw, it must have been an accident that made him let go of the Republican platform, or he must have been choked off by a power entirely beyond his control. But now that he is fast hold of a different faith; no resolution of a Wisconsin senate, no bitter protest of an indignant, injured constituency, can shake him one hair’s breadth. And to this powerful makeup a pair of glistening steel-gray eyes, a presence easier felt than described, and you have plenty of material out of which to construct a triple-headed Cerebus strong enough to guard the gates of—even the Executive mansion.

His antagonist, Senator Nye, of Nevada, has the finest head in the American Senate. Mother Nature must have expended her strength and means in the handsome head and broad shoulders. It must have been originally meant that he should stand six feet and an inch or two in his stocking feet, yet by some of those accidents which never can be guarded against, he is scarcely of the average height. His face presents one of those rare spectacles, those strange combinations, in which intellect and beauty are striving for supremacy.

Eyes of that indescribable hazel that light up with passion or emotion, like an evening dress under the gaslight. Nose chiseled with the precision of the sculptor’s skillful steel, and a mouth in which dwells character, passion, and all the graces, neatly fringed by a decent beard, as every respectable man’s should be. Hands small and bloodless, the usual accompaniment of the powerful brain of an active thinker. Last, but not least, there is enough electricity about him to send a first-class message around the world, with plenty left for all home purposes.

The Senate chamber is a painful place for the eye to rest this winter. Its furniture, carpets, and many other etceteras are suggestive of molten heat. There is a flaming red carpet on the floor, and every chair and sofa blushes like a carnation rose. Red and yellow stare the unfortunate Senator in the face whichever way he turns. Even what little sunlight manages to sneak into this celebrated chamber steals in clothed in those two prismatic, nightmare colors. When the galleries are packed, as they were to-day, there is scarcely more air than in an exhausted receiver, and it is astonishing that so many delicate women can remain so many hours subjected to such an atmosphere. And now that the galleries are sprinkled with dark fruit, thick as a briery hedge in blackberry time; this, taken into consideration, with many other wise reasons, may help to account for the large Democratic gain in the late election returns.

Never within memory, not even during the extravagance of the late war, have so many costly costumes adorned the persons of our American women as the present winter in Washington. And the Capitol, with its oriental luxuriance, seems a fitting place for the grand display. A handsome blonde, enveloped in royal purple velvet, without being relieved by so much as a shadow of any other color or material, brings the words of the Psalmist to all thoughtful minds: “They toil not, neither do they spin (or write), yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

Olivia.