holds itself ready to exclude spectators and go into secret session at any moment, on the request of a single Senator. As a secret session is always supposed to be for the purpose of discussing a Presidential communication, the fiction is embalmed in the form of a motion “that the Senate proceed to the consideration of executive business.” This is the signal for the doorkeepers to evict the occupants of the galleries and shut the doors leading into the corridors; but sometimes the real reason for the request is widely removed from its pretext. I have known it to be offered for the purpose of cutting short the exhibition which a tipsy Senator was making of himself; or to prevent a tedious airing of grievances by a Senator who had quarreled with the President over the dispensation of patronage in his State; or to silence a Senator who, objecting to the negotiation of a certain treaty, kept referring to it in open debate while it was still pending under the seal of confidence. In this last instance, the offending Senator was so obstinate of purpose that the doors had to be closed and reopened several times in a single day. On the face of things, there is no reason why the President should not attend any session of the Senate at which business of his originating is under debate. No President since the first, however, has made the experiment. Washington attended three secret sessions, but was so angered by the Senate’s referring to a committee sundry questions which he insisted should be settled on the spot, that he quitted the chamber, emphatically vowing that he would waste no more time on such trifling. The Senators excused their conduct by saying that they were embarrassed in talking about the President and his motives while he was sitting there.