A proposition was afterwards humorously proposed, to add another story to the new State House, so that fugacious members would have to go down the water spouts if they ran! Tried for Scaring the Girls. Thirty years ago, when Springfield was blooming into the dignity of its Capitalive position, the American House was its great hotel, (and it isn't its smallest yet,) and the resort of those who loved to spend a few hours in the society of the _bon vivants_ who then assembled--Lincoln, Douglas, Shields, Ferguson, Herndon, (then a young man, but since the law partner of Uncle Abe,) and many others "not unknown to fame," could almost always be found here during the evening. One evening as they were sitting in free converse in the bar-room, one of the chamber maids came in and informed the landlord that a man was under her bed. It seems while stooping down to untie her gaiters, she saw a man under the bed. With rare presence of mind, she excused herself to her fellow servant as having forgotten some duty, and reported her discovery to the landlord. Boniface at once called for volunteers to secure the interloper. So eager were they for fun, that all volunteered. They surprised and captured the man, and brought him down to the bar-room; but what to do with him? was the next question. Springfield then had no vagabonds who made fees out of misfortunes--i.e. policemen--and it was determined to treat him with the prompt justice peculiar to that era. A court was therefore got together at once, all expectant of fun but the unfortunate culprit. Judge Thomas Brown was decided upon to act as Judge; Melborn, the talented, but eccentric State Attorney, was detailed to prosecute; and Lincoln and Douglas to defend the prisoner. Dr. Wallace acted as Sheriff, and upon the jury were Dr. Merriman, * Gen. Shields, John Calhoun (of Lecompton memory,) Uri Manly, and many other well known personages. Lawborn, though a regularly-educated and talented lawyer, took occasion not only to be as "funny as he could," but to imitate the prevailing style of oratory too common in Illinois--a style in which the Hard-shell-Baptist devil mingled with the rough dialect of the back-woodsman.