Some days afterwards, while Lyon was sitting at his desk just before the House was called to order, Griswold walked across the House and beat him over the head and shoulders "with all his force" with "a large yellow hickory cane." Lyon disengaged himself from his desk, got hold of the Congressional tongs, and attempted to try their power on the head of the Connecticut member, whereupon Mr. Griswold closed with him and they both rolled on the floor, various members pulling them apart by the legs, while the Speaker, justly indignant, cried, "What! take hold of a man by the legs! that is no way to take hold of him!" Being, however, pulled apart by this irregular process, they went on to endanger the personal safety of members by striking at each other with sticks in the lobbies and about the House at intervals through the day, until at last Mr. H. G. Otis succeeded in procuring the intervention of the House to compel a suspension of hostilities. Lyon, though a very rough specimen of democracy, was by no means a contemptible man, and, politics aside, showed energy and character in his subsequent career. Mr. Griswold was one of the ablest and most prominent members of the Federal party, and also one of the most violent in his political orthodoxy then and afterwards. GALLATIN TO HIS WIFE. 8th February, 1798. ... We are still hunting the Lyon, and it is indeed the most unpleasant and unprofitable business that ever a respectable representative body did pursue. Enough on that subject, for I hear too much of it every day.... I am good for nothing without you. I think and I smoke and I fret and I sleep and I eat, but that is really the sum total of the enjoyments both of my body and soul. I walk not, I visit not, I read not, and, you know, alas, I write not.... 13th February, 1798.