“The senator then returned to the chamber and was sitting by the side of his colleague, Senator Shively, when the same man sent in a card to the latter. Senator Shively went into the marble room and when he resumed his seat five minutes later Senator Kern asked: “‘Who was your friend?’ “‘He was from Elwood and he just wanted to talk to me about old times. He recalled one occasion when I spoke at Elwood and he was kind enough to say it was a corking good speech.’ “‘Honest Injun, Ben,’ how much did he touch you for?’ Senator Shively jumped as if startled. “‘Fifty cents,’ he answered. “‘Well, that shows he thinks I am the better senator. He stung me for a dollar,’ said Kern. “‘No, I think he sized you up as the easier mark,’ came back Shively, and they then adjourned to the cloak room and told the story to a group of senators, who enjoyed it hugely. “Reminiscences with Senator Kern as the central and radiating figure might be told by the hour, but even reminiscences must come to an end. It so happened that I was the last man in Washington to bid him a final good-bye. He had come from his room at the Congress Hall Hotel and summoned a taxi to take him to the depot. Passing me at the entrance of the hotel he extended his hand and said, brave: “‘Good-bye; I am going down to the sanatorium at Asheville to take a post-graduate course.’ “I was inexpressibly shocked a few days later to learn that his spirit had winged its flight to the blessed Summerland.” IX After Mr. Ludlow no newspaper man was thrown into such frequent contact in the discharge of professional duties with Senator Kern as William H. Blodgett, who has been for so many years the political writer of _The Indianapolis News_. In campaign after campaign he has been assigned by his paper to cover the tours of the party leaders, and has reported all the conventions, state and national, for an equal period. He made one of the “Kern party” on practically every important tour that Kern made during the last eighteen years of his career. Mr. Blodgett’s reminiscences throw an interesting side light on the character of the senator: