Besides sprawling with their feet higher than their heads, and otherwise airing their contempt for conventional etiquette, many of the old-time Representatives felt free to read newspapers while debates were going on around them, indifferent to their disturbance of both orators and audience. The first pointed rebuke of this practice was administered by James K. Polk when Speaker of the House. He noticed one morning that substantially every Representative had a newspaper in hand when the gavel fell for beginning the day’s session. The journal was read, but nobody paid any attention to it, and then the Speaker made his usual announcement that the House was ready for business. Still everybody remained buried in the morning’s news. After another vain attempt to set the machinery in motion, Mr. Polk quietly drew a newspaper from his own pocket, seated himself with his back toward the House, spread the sheet open before him, and ostentatiously immersed himself in its printed contents. One by one the Representatives finished their reading, and perhaps a quarter of an hour passed before there came from all sides an irregular volley of calls: “Mr. Speaker!” “Mr. Speaker!” Mr. Polk ignored them till one of the baffled members moved that the House proceed to the election of a presiding officer, to take the place of the Speaker, who appeared to be absent. This brought Mr. Polk to his feet with the remark that he not only was present, but had notified the House that it was ready for business and had received no response. The House took the joke in good part and showed by its conduct thereafter that it was not above profiting by the Speaker’s reproof. Although women were admitted as spectators to the sessions of both chambers on the same terms as men, there was for many years an undercurrent of feeling against their encroachments. There was limited room in either hall for their accommodation behind the colonnade. In this space--the original “lobby”--there was an open fireplace at each end, and it soon became a common complaint among the Senators that the feminine guests drew the sofas up in front of the fire and thus effectually shut off the warmth from every one else. Aaron Burr, while Vice-president, was the first person in authority to take cognizance of this indictment. He notified the visiting women that after a certain date they must cease coming into the lobby and find seats in the gallery. They were appropriately indignant and declared an almost unanimous boycott against the Senate. Vice-president Clinton was of a different temper from his predecessor and let them all come back again. By degrees, however, as the privileges of the floor became more and more restricted in both chambers, the women were given a special gallery for themselves.