“I was rather late in my attendance in Congress this day; a circumstance the more distressing, as I found not only the gallery, but even the passage also, full of spectators.… Every person within the walls of this House seemed to be waiting for the development of some great and important mystery. The members were paired off, laying their heads together, whispering and listening with great eagerness; while the Speaker, seated with his chin supported between his right finger and thumb, and his eyes rivetted to the floor, appeared lost, buried alive, as it were, in profundity of thought. Never did wisdom appear more lovely in my eyes.… The seriousness of the members of the House naturally produced the most anxious expectation in the minds of the good citizens in my quarter. A thousand ridiculous inquiries were made, in the twinkling of an eye, which were answered by a thousand still more ridiculous conjectures. One said that a law was going to be read to oblige the Virginians to free their slaves and pay their just debts; but another swore that was impossible. A third declared a second embargo was to be laid; and a fourth observed that it was to hinder the cruel English from carrying off our poor horses, to eat them in the West Indies.… To tell the reader the truth of my opinion, I was afraid that some new confiscating or sequestrating project was on foot; and when Mr. Dayton, the Speaker, awoke from his reverie, and began to speak,--‘Lord have mercy,’ said I, ‘upon the poor British creditors.’ My fears on this account were soon dissipated. The Speaker told us that this message was of the most _solemn_ and _serious_ nature, and he therefore requested both the members of the House and the strangers in the gallery to observe the profoundest silence. “The reader will easily imagine that a warning like this increased the torture of suspense. It was now that we felt the value of the hearing faculty. I observed my neighbours brushing aside their matted and untutored locks, that nothing might impede the entrance of the glad tidings. We were, as the poet says, ‘all eye, all ear.’ But there was a little man down below, whose anxiety seemed to surpass that of all the rest. He crept to within a very few paces of the leeward side of the chair, and, turning himself sideways, lifted up the left corner of his wig, placing the auricular orifice open and extended, in a direct line with the Speaker’s mouth, so that not a single breath of the precious sounds could possibly escape him. His longing countenance seemed to say, in the language of his countryman, Macbeth:--‘Speak! Speak! had I three ears, by heaven I’d hear thee.’ …