Spending most of our time in Washington, we found members of both Houses of Congress were much misunderstood by the people. They are constant hard workers with small salaries and almost universally honorable, honest men, and not, as many people believe, as they do of the army and navy, idle and uninterested in the government's welfare. Public sentiment has compelled many legislators to abandon the profession for another where they are better understood and better paid. Among these noble men, I want to pay a tribute to a few of the finest statesmen the country has seen since the War of the Rebellion; men who trimmed their sails to no passing breeze but stood steadfastly for that public policy which would in their opinion bear best fruits for the great republic in the future. First among them, I put President Cleveland, Senator Hoar and Senator Root. Cleveland, I consider the Washington of his time. When special classes of labor, having in their trust the railroads, the principal utilities of the whole people, declared their purpose to strike and by force and violence make their class the ruling class, the President issued his famous executive order that "if it took all the money in the treasury and all the soldiers in the army to carry a postal card from New York to San Francisco, the card would be delivered." [Illustration: PRESIDENT GROVER CLEVELAND.] [Illustration: Copyright, Parker. PRESIDENT WILLIAM MCKINLEY.] [Illustration: Copyright by Schervee. SENATOR GEORGE F. HOAR.] [Illustration: Copyright, Pach Bros. Elihu Root (image of signature)] Unfortunately this glorious example had no power in later years, when self-styled statesmen with greater opportunities cowered before a similar threat and surrendered the liberties of a majority of the people. Hoar was the Franklin of his period. The Spanish War so inflated our military reputation "because a wretched kern we slew" as to cause a frenzy for "World Power"--when conquest, exploitation and subjugation of other lands and other peoples with their trade and commerce after the manner of other world powers was proposed. Hoar valiantly sought to prevent this fatal mistake by requiring that "the Constitution should follow the flag." He was defeated by but one vote (I think) in the Peace Commission, in the Senate, and in the Supreme Court. There is nothing more pathetic in history than his remark when called upon to assist in an appropriation for the restoration of Plymouth Rock, "Plymouth Rock was washed away by the loss of these votes." Root, the Hamilton of his occasion, when chairman of the recent constitutional convention of his great State, sought to reform its criminal and civil jurisprudence, so that its courts should be instruments for the detection and punishment of crimes and disorders rather than for technical avoidance of that righteous end.