The Olivia Letters: Being Some History of Washington City for Forty Years as Told by the Letters of a Newspaper CorrespondentBriggs, Emily Edson
History
The Olivia Letters: Being Some History of Washington City for Forty Years as Told by the Letters of a Newspaper Correspondent
Briggs, Emily Edson
United States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1933; Washington (D.C.) -- History
Judge Nelson was a semi-rebel--a sort of Tennessee neutral--during
the rebellion, and it has not been ascertained whether it was for
this reason that Andrew Johnson chose him for the defence; but it is
now known beyond a doubt that minister and lawyer are so ingeniously
mixed in the judge’s composition that a third compound is the result,
bearing no more resemblance to the first ingredients than soap bears
to oil and alkali.
Mr. Groesbeck had the floor next--apparently a good, strong
man, bearing the same relation to the human family that a fair,
rosy-cheeked apple does to the remainder of the fruit in the orchard.
Like Mr. Stanbery, he pleads illness. His voice seemed in the
last stages of collapse. It is very difficult to catch the hoarse
sentences in the galleries. There is nothing flashing, brilliant, or
electrical in his speech, and if there were, it would be entirely
lost, unless it rose, cloud-like, into the galleries. Hard, cold,
flinty argument must be hurled upon the impassive Senate. Mr.
Groesbeck seems to be aware of this fact, as he contends against the
odds.
The gallery wears its usual high-toned, fashionable elegance. A
real hothouse of rare human exotics is gathered together, partaking
of the same weaknesses and desires that animate creation in the
humbler spheres of life. Some of these exquisite butterflies have
a way of spreading their voluminous crinoline to the exclusion of
some unfortunate in want of a seat; but as soon as an acquaintance
makes an appearance, in the twinkling of an eye space is evolved
from a minus quantity and immediately occupied, and the real honest
possessor has no redress except in repeating an ave, or declaiming
mentally the touching poem of “sour grapes.”
Allowing it to be exceedingly gratifying, it is not good taste to
be eating in public. History tells us that a great monarch used to
take his emetics and vomit gracefully in the presence of the court,
but even royalty could not add dignity to, nor throw a rosy glamor
over, one of Nature’s disgraceful freaks. And in the high court
of impeachment no pink-lipped, amber-haired beauty can afford to
distort her features and wantonly assail the ears of her neighbors
by cracking nuts with her pearly teeth. If a woman has neither youth
nor beauty, and commits the same fatal error, “Angels and ministers
of grace defend us!”
OLIVIA.
A FAITHFUL SERVANT.
A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW OF THE LIFE WORK OF HON. THADDEUS STEVENS.
WASHINGTON, _April 28, 1868_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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