This last is set forth in defence against an imputation of parsimony on the side of Jim Britt. He was one who spent his money like a king whenever and wherever his education or experience pointed the way. It was his clothes of a remote period to make him shy, else Jim Britt would have shrunk not from the Raleigh itself, but climbed and clambered and browsed among the timberline prices of its grill-room, as safe and satisfied as ever browsed mountain goat on the high levels of its upland home. Yea, forsooth! Jim Britt, like a sailor ashore, could spend his money with a free and happy hand. Jim Britt, acting on a hint offered of his sensibilities, for a first step reclothed himself from a high-priced shop; following these improvements, save for the fact that he appalled the eye as a trifle gorgeous, he might not have disturbed the sacred taste of Connecticut Avenue itself. In short, in the matter of garb, Jim Britt, while audible, was down to date. With the confidence born of his new clothes--for clothes in some respects may make the man--Jim Britt sate him down to study Congress. He deemed it a citadel to be stormed; not lacking in military genius he began to look it over for a weak point. These adventures of Jim Britt now about a record, occurred, you should understand, almost a decade ago. In that day there should have been eighty-eight senators and three hundred and fifty-six representatives, albeit, by reason of death or failure to elect, a not-to-be-noticed handful of seats were vacant. By an industrious perusal of the Congressional directory, wherein the skeleton of each House was laid out and told in all its divers committee small-bones, Jim Britt began to understand a few of the lions in his path. For his confusion he found that Congress was sub-divided into full sixty committees, beginning with such giant conventions as the Ways and Means, Appropriations, Military, Naval, Coinage, Weights and Measures, Banking and Currency, Indian, Public Lands, Postal, and Pensions, and dwindling down to ignoble riffraff--which owned each a chairman, a committee room, a full complement of clerks and messengers, and an existence, but never convened--like the Committee on Acoustics and Ventliation, and Alcoholic Liquor Traffic. Jim Britt learned also of the Sergeants at Arms of Senate and House, and how these dignitaries controlled the money for those bodies and paid the members their salaries. Incidentally, and by way of gossip, he was told of that House Sergeant who had levanted with the riches entrusted to his hands, and left the broken membership, gnashing its teeth in poverty and impotent gloom, unable to draw pay.