light of day, under the eye of the whole people, subject at all times to the closest observation, and always attended with the sharpest criticism. I think no other official is held to such instant and such rigid accountability. Parliamentary rulings in their very nature are peremptory; almost absolute in authority and instantaneous in effect. They cannot always be enforced in such a way as to win applause or secure popularity; but I am sure that no man of any party who is worthy to fill this chair will ever see a dividing line between duty and policy. "Thanking you once more, and thanking you cordially, for the honorable testimonial you have placed on record to my credit, I perform my only remaining duty in declaring that the Forty-third Congress has reached its constitutional limit, and that the House of Representatives stands adjourned without day." So far from dispersing, as Mr. Blaine stepped lightly down from the rostrum, the crowded assemblage, floor and galleries, rose, and greeted him with repeated salvos of applause, running in waves from side to side, with almost delirious cheering, clapping of hands, and waving of handkerchiefs. Fully five minutes, it seemed, he was detained, bowing and acknowledging, with emotion, this tribute to the record he had made, and for full half an hour there poured toward his standing place, at the clerk's desk, a constant stream of members and citizens, anxious to press his hand and express in words the admiration and regret already shown in signs. None who were there can forget the impression made by this scene. His parliamentary decisions live in print, and have been quoted as authority, in foreign lands as well as in this, but the gracefulness, eloquence and wit with which they are delivered, and his whole conduct of the business of the House, through six years of a great and trying period, can only be left to the memory of those who were actual spectators. CHAPTER IX. DARKER DAYS. To the period of Mr. Blaine's triumphal success as Speaker of the House was to succeed a brief one which, unhappily, afforded an almost total contrast of gloom and adverse circumstance. But to those who reflect, it will show his innate greatness of mind and heart, perhaps even more strongly displayed than in the flush of his success. If it be not pedantic to quote, it might be said that he had taken for his motto, “Ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito!" His wide and well-earned popularity was apparently to be obscured, at least so far as any benefit to him was concerned. Instead of friendly regards from both parties, the Democracy were to be more stirred up against him than they were against the extremest Radicals, while he was cruelly assailed from the rear by a crossfire from personal factions, which, while they hated each other, hated him still worse for his towering eminence as a presidential candidate; finally, it seemed as if the stars in their courses were fighting against him, when the midsummer sun struck him prostrate at the crisis of his career, upon the steps of his house of prayer, |