All in all the session of 1895 was one of the most vicious in the history of the commonwealth. The charges made by Kern in his speech against the gerrymander were true. It was literally true that the Burns’ statutes purchased with the state’s money for the state, to be used during the session by members, were actually stolen and carried away. But he might have added that there have been few sessions of the Indiana legislature during which there was so much general talk of the corrupt use of money. The hotels swarmed with lobbyists, and even the female lobbyist, a rather rare species at that time in Indiana, made her appearance, and in one instance created something of a scandal by being ejected from a hotel. Until then most of the lobbying had been done in the capitol, openly, but this session ushered in a new departure--the lobbyists did their work in hotels and other places. This ended Kern’s career in the state senate. It had profited him greatly in that it had presented to the Democracy of the state a new Kern--a Kern seasoned, sobered by experience, who retained his youthful fire, intensity and eloquence. He entered the senate personally popular and widely known, but generally looked upon as a merely effective campaign speaker; he left it a recognized leader of the party in the state. The estimate of his colleagues has been furnished me by Hon. M. A. Sweeney of Jasper, who served with him: “He was by common consent, and without the least assumption on his part, the admired and beloved leader of our party there. I feel fully justified in asserting that no member on either side of that body of legislators ever questioned his mental superiority, personal integrity or magnanimity. In that arena of public debate, in which the flow and ebb of acrimonious clashings in verbal swordsmanship afford so splendid an opportunity to draw the line of cleavage between the cheap politician and the true gentleman and statesman, it was there he stood without a peer, personifying the calmness of power. “His kind assistance to, and his painstaking patience with the embryonic, ambitious, would-be statesmen of his own or of the opposite party, were almost paternal in him; if your cause had merit, you ever found a true and helpful friend. No matter how arduous and exacting his senatorial duties were, and they were multifarious and onerous, he never hesitated to listen graciously to our crude ideas of state craft, and he gave very much of his valuable time in aiding and advising us in whipping into legal forms statutes the vain glory for which was worn by others, while he was always willing to remain unknown in all such affairs. He did not have an enemy in that body, and if he had it was not Senator Kern’s fault, for his suavity of manner and his courtliness of bearing toward every one won all to him.