The conversion of the hall from its former to its present uses was at the instance of the late Senator Morrill of Vermont, who procured legislation permitting every State in the Union to contribute two statues of distinguished citizens to this temple of fame. No restriction having been placed on the sizes of the figures, one result of his well-meant effort is a grotesque array of pigmies and giants, some of the personages biggest in life being most diminutive in effigy, while others of comparatively insignificant stature are here given massive proportions. Most of the notables thus immortalized are persons with whose names we associate a story. Here stand, for example, Ethan Allen as he may have looked when demanding the surrender of Fort Ticonderoga “in the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress”; Charles Carroll, who wrote Carrollton after his name so that the servants of the King, when sent to hang him for signing the Declaration, would know where to find him; sturdy John Stark, who snapped his fingers at Congress and whipped the British at Bennington in his own fashion; Muhlenberg, the patriot parson, throwing back his gown at the close of his sermon and standing forth as a Continental soldier; and fiery Jim Shields, who once challenged Lincoln to a duel, but was laughed out of it when, arriving on the field, he found his adversary already there, mowing the tall grass with a cutlass to make the fighting easier! Another corridor brings us to the present Hall of Representatives, which has been in use since the latter part of 1857. It is a spacious rectangular room, with a high ceiling chiefly of glass, through which it is lighted in the daytime by the sun and after nightfall by the modified glow of electric lamps in the attic. Its plan is that of an amphitheater, the platform occupied by the Speaker being at the lowest level in the middle of the long southern side. Facing this are the concentric curved benches of the members. Formerly the body of the hall was filled with desks but, as the membership increased with the population of the country, these were found to take up too much room, not to mention the temptation they offered for letter-writing and other diversions. Back of the Speaker’s chair hang a full-length portrait of Washington by Vanderlyn and one of Lafayette by Ary Schaeffer. The Washington is the conventional portrait as far as the waist-line, but the legs were borrowed from a prominent citizen of Maryland, who had a better pair than the General, and who consented to pose them for the benefit of posterity.