That was the legislature which elected John M. Palmer to the United States Senate from Illinois. The election was accomplished only after a memorable deadlock of two months in which the Democrats of the general assembly stood so nobly, shoulder to shoulder, that they were called “The Immortal 101.” When they were finally reënforced by the votes of two members elected as representatives of the Farmers’ Alliance, and elected their man, they had a gold medal struck to commemorate their own heroism. They were not, perhaps, exactly immortal, but they did stand for their principles so stanchly that when they came to celebrate their victory, some of their orators compared them to those other immortals who held Thermopylæ. Their principle was the popular election of United States senators, and they had a fine exemplar of democracy in their candidate. He had been nominated by a state convention, as had Lincoln, whom General Palmer had known intimately and had supported both for senator and president. He was the last of those great figures of Illinois whom the times immediately preceding the Civil War had so abundantly brought forth. He had commanded an army corps, he had been governor of his state, and in 1872 a presidential possibility in the Republican party. But he had turned to the Democrats, and after he became their senator, the first Illinois had known since Douglas, he became a presidential possibility in the Democratic party; that was in 1892, and whatever chances he had he destroyed himself by coming on from Washington and declaring for Grover Cleveland. Four years later he was nominated for the presidency by the conservative faction of his party. He told me, when I was finishing my law studies under him, that he had never lost anything politically by bolting any of the several parties he had been in, but had usually gained in self respect by doing so; and if to the politician his whole career presented inconsistencies, to the man of principle he must seem wholly consistent and sincere. Certain it is that he followed that inward spirit which alone can guide a man through the perplexities of life, and so the principle with him came ever before the party.