Many people suppose Congress to be an assemblage of orators. This is a great mistake. In point of ability its members are eminently respectable, and many of them distinguished in their particular line of business, profession or thought. Most of the set speeches are delivered from manuscript. The matter is well considered and in most cases clearly stated; but the delivery is often dull, listless and without animation. This is particularly true of speeches founded on a dreary array of facts and statistics. While the logic of such facts or figures may be very convincing, yet in the hands of most men their presentation is very uninteresting. Few men can present statistics in an interesting and captivating manner. Garfield must be considered as pre-eminent among that class of men. I have heard him make a speech of over an hour in length on financial questions in which he not only presented a formidable array of statistics, but held his auditors spell-bound to its conclusion. It may be said of the orators of the House that though they are great advocates, they are not constructive statesmen; they are orators and nothing more; they are good to show the reason for a provision and skillful in their defense of it from attack. Conkling, one of the most brilliant speakers in the Senate, although a member of that distinguished body for many years, is not the author of any beneficial act of legislation. The career of such a man will be brilliant, but it will be brief. It is the constructive statesman who succeeds in writing his name permanently in the legislative history of his country. Most of the legislation benefiting the people, or putting their rights on deeper or broader foundations, has originated with the silent workers in either House of Congress.