"Well, I'll be damned! Aint your county got any more sense than to send such a specimen as you back? Why weren't you around to the caucus?" Bradley stood around awkwardly alone, not knowing just what to do. Perhaps some of these men would be glad to see him if they knew him, but he could not think of going to introduce himself. Being new in politics, there was not a man there whose face he recognized. The few that he had met at the hotel were not in sight. He felt as if he had been thrust into this jovial company, and was unwelcome. The House was called to order by one of the members of the capital county, and prayer was offered. He sat quietly in his seat as things went on. The session adjourned after electing temporary speaker, clerk, etc. Bradley felt so alien to it all that he scarcely took the trouble to vote; and when the committee on credentials was appointed, he felt nervously in his pocket to see that his papers were safe. He felt very much as he used to when, as a boy, he went to have his hair cut, and sat in torture during the whole operation, in the fear that his quarter (all he had with him) might be lost, and trembling to think what would happen in such a case. That night he moved to a new boarding-place. He secured a room near the Capitol, and went to supper in a small private house near by, which had a most astonishing amplitude of dining-room. He felt quite at home there, for the food was put on the table in the good old way, and passed around from hand to hand. The mashed potato tasted better, piled high, with a lump of butter in the top of it; and the slices of roast beef, outspread on the platter, enabled him to get the crisp outside, if it happened to start from his end of the table. There were judges and generals and senators and legislators of various ranks all about him. Crude, rough, wholesome fellows, most of them, with big, brawny hands like his own, and loud, hearty voices. It was impossible to stand in awe of a judge who handled his knife more deftly than his fork, and spooned the potato out of the big, earthen-ware dish with a resounding slap. He began to see that these men were exactly like the people he had been with all his life. He argued, however, that they were perhaps the poorer and the more honorable part of the legislature. He wrote a note to Judge Brown, telling him that he was settled, but was taking very little part in the organizing of the House. He did not say that he was disappointed in his reception, but he was; his vanity had been hurt. His canvass had attracted considerable attention from the Democratic press of the country, and he expected to be received with great favor by them. He had come out of Republicanism for their sake, and they ought to recognize him. He did not consider that no one knew him by sight, and that recognition was impossible.