Now let us go back to the north or Senate wing of the building. On our way we swing around a little open air-well, through which we look down into the corresponding corridor of the basement. The well is surrounded by a colonnade supporting the base of a circular skylight. The columns are worth noticing, because their capitals are of native design, using the leaf of the tobacco plant somewhat conventionalized. They date from the period when the clerk of the United States Supreme Court, whose office is near by, used to receive a part of his compensation in tobacco. A few steps more bring us to the Court itself, sitting in a chamber considerably smaller than the Hall of Statuary, but laid out on the same plan. This was the first legislative chamber ever occupied in the Capitol, having been till 1859 the Hall of the Senate. Here it was that Thomas Jefferson was twice inaugurated as President. Here Daniel Webster pronounced the famous “reply to Hayne” which every boy orator once learned to spout from the rostrum. Here Preston Brooks made his murderous assault upon Charles Sumner, and here Henry Clay delivered the farewell address which we used to find in all the school readers. On the walls of this chamber once hung the life-size oil portraits of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, which were presented by the Government of France to the Government of the United States just after our Revolution, and which disappeared when the British burned the Capitol in 1814. The room has always suffered from the same bad acoustic properties which caused the House of Representatives to exchange its old hall for its new one; and it has a similar whispering gallery, so that a court officer in one corner can communicate with a colleague in the other in a tone so low as to be inaudible to any one else. Since it took possession here, the Court has rendered its legal tender and anti-trust decisions, and a number of others of historic importance. In this room sat, in 1877, the Electoral Commission which decided that Mr. Hayes was entitled to take office as President. Here occurs, every day during a term, the one ancient and impressive ceremonial which can be witnessed at our seat of government. At the stroke of noon there appears at the right corner of the chamber the crier, who in a loud voice announces: “The Honorable the Supreme Court of the United States!” All present--attorneys, spectators, and minor functionaries--rise and remain standing while the members of the Court enter in single file, the Chief Justice leading. The lawyers bow to the Justices, who return the bow before sinking into their chairs. Thereupon the crier makes his second announcement: “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! All persons having business with the Honorable the Supreme Court of the United States are admonished to draw near and give attention, as the Court is now sitting. God save the United States and this Honorable Court!”