The custom of wearing their hats while transacting business was continued by the Representatives for fifty years or more. Even the Speaker, as long as he sat in his chair, would keep his hat on, though he was accustomed to remove it when he stood to address the House. The Senators, whatever may have been their practice during the years of their seclusion, distinguished themselves from the Representatives immediately thereafter by sitting with bared heads. They also avoided the habit, common in the House, of putting their feet up on the nearest elevated object--usually a desk-lid--and lolling on their spines. English visitors, though accustomed to the wearing of hats in their own House of Commons, nevertheless found a text for criticism in the way the American Representatives did it; and they all had something severe to say of the prevalence of tobacco-chewing in the House, with its accompaniment of spitting, as Mrs. Trollope put it, “to an excess that decency forbids me to describe.” Less offensive to the taste of our visitors from abroad was the indulgence in snuff-taking, which was so general that boxes or jars were set up in convenient places inside of both halls, and it was made the duty of certain employees to keep these always filled with a fine brand of snuff. Any of the most eloquent orators in Congress was liable to stop at regular intervals in a speech to help himself to a large pinch, bury his face in a bandanna handkerchief, and have it out with nature. A few of the lawmakers, indeed, cultivated snuff-taking as a fine art, and were proud of their reputations for dexterity in it. Henry Clay was one of the most skilful. While we are on the subject of indulgences, we must not overlook a drink called switchel, which was very popular, being compounded of rum, ginger, molasses, and water. Every member was allowed then, as now, in addition to his salary and traveling expenses, a fixed supply of “stationery”; and this term, which was elastic enough to include everything from pens and paper to jack-knives and razors, was stretched to cover the delectable switchel under the thin disguise of “sirup.” In later years, when a wave of teetotalism had swept over Washington, and the open sale of alcoholic drinks in the restaurants of the Capitol was under a temporary ban, any member who wished a drink of whisky ordered it as “cold tea,” and it was served to him in a china cup. This stratagem fell into marked discredit when one of the most respectable and abstemious members of the House, who had never tasted intoxicating liquor of any sort, ordered cold tea in entire good faith to clear his throat in the midst of a speech, and became maudlin before he was aware that anything was amiss.