I received the charge of the enemy "with poised lance, and visor down." I deluged the tall cliff under a flood of "mountain eloquence" which poured from my patriotic lips like molasses pouring from the bung-hole of the universe. I mounted the American eagle and soared among the stars. I scraped the skies and cut the black illimitable far out beyond the orbit of Uranus, and I reached the climax of my triumphant flight with a hyperbole that eclipsed Goldsmith's metaphor, unthroned the foe, and left him stunned upon the field. Thus I soared: "I stood upon the sea shore, and with a frail reed in my hand, I wrote in the sand, 'My Country, I love thee;' a mad wave came rushing by and wiped out the fair impression. Cruel wave, treacherous sand, frail reed; I said, 'I hate ye I'll trust ye no more, but with a giant's arm, I'll reach to the coast of Norway, and pluck its tallest pine, and dip it in the crater of Vesuvius, and write upon the burnished heavens; 'My Country, _I love thee_! And I'd like to see _any_ durned wave rub that out!!'" Between the long intervals of argument my speech grinned with anecdotes like a basketfull of 'possum heads. The fiddle played its part, the people did the rest, and I carved upon the tombstone of the demolished Knight these tender words: "Tread softly 'round this sacred heap, It guards ambition's restless sleep; Whose greed for place ne'er did forsake him, Don't mention office, or you'll wake him!" I reached the goal of my visions and dreams under that collossal dome whose splendors are shadowed in the broad river that flows by the shrine of Mt. Vernon. I sat amid the confusion and uproar of the parliamentary struggles of the lower branch of the Congress of the United States. "Sunset" Cox, with his beams of wit and humor, convulsed the house and shook the gallaries. Alexander Stephens, one of the last tottering monuments of the glory of the Old South, still lingering on the floor, where, in by-gone years the battles of his vigorous manhood were fought. I saw in the Senate an assemblage of the grandest men since the days of Webster and Clay. Conkling, the intellectual Titan, the Apollo of manly form and grace, thundered there. The "Plumed Knight," that grand incarnation of mind and magnetism, was at the zenith of his glory. Edmunds, and Zack Chandler, and the brilliant and learned Jurist, Mat. Carpenter, were there. Thurman the "noblest Roman of them all" was there with his famous bandana handkerchief. The immortal Ben Hill, the idol of the South, and Lamar, the gifted orator and highest type of Southern chivalry were there. Garland, and Morgan, and Harris, and Coke, were there; and Beck with his sledge-hammer intellect. It was an arena of opposing gladiators more magnificent and majestic than was ever witnessed in the palmiest days of the Roman Empire. There were giants in the Senate in those days, and when they clashed shields and measured