Brooks never misses such an opening. He proposed to amend the motion. He thought the roll ought first to be completed. He couldn’t understand why a State good enough to furnish the country a President wasn’t good enough to furnish the House members. If Mr. Maynard, of Tennessee, was to be kicked out by the party in power, he hoped they would proceed to perform the same operation on their Tennessee President. And then he told how, in the years of the war, he had heard the eloquent voice of this persecuted and rejected Tennesseean ringing on the banks of the Hudson, on the side of an imperiled country. But he forgot to add (as his hearers did not forget to remember,) how earnestly he had himself then taken—the other side! And, as if determined to stab poor Maynard as dangerously as possible, he even dragged up the Rebel Virginians, (“Sandie” Stuart at their head,) placed them by the loyal East Tennesseean’s side and claimed for them equal rights! Long John Wentworth made his _début_ by slowly rearing aloft his ponderous hulk, and calling, like a stentor, for order. The Clerk, handsomely and fairly, decided the speaker in order. Long John sank down, and Brooks improved his chance: “When the newly arrived gentleman from Illinois becomes a little more familiar with matters in the House, he will be a little slower in undertaking to find me out of order.” Presently he essayed a tilt against Thad. Stevens, but came out from that, as most men do, badly beaten, with House and galleries roaring at his discomfiture. Finally, Brooks was ready to close and sought to yield the floor to a Democrat; the Unionists were quick enough, this time, and objected. Points of order were raised, and old heads tried to entangle the Clerk; but he was clear as a bell, and his rulings were prompt, sharp, and decisive. The moment a Unionist fairly got the floor, the previous question was moved, and the contest was over. “If Maynard had spoken,” says Judge Warmouth, the delegate from the “Territory of Louisiana,” “I should have claimed the right to speak too.” * * * * * The stoop-shouldered, studious looking, thin-voiced Mr. Morrill, rises. “I nominate for Speaker, Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana.” Across the way a ponderous Democrat: “I nominate James Brooks, of New York;” and some person of bad taste titters, the laugh is infectious, and breaks out all over the floor, and runs around the galleries; while Brooks tries to look solemn for a moment, then makes the best of it, and laughs with the rest.