came, and he took the oaths.  And a very valuable member he made.  They appointed him on the Committee on Parishes; but I wrote a letter for him, resigning, on the ground that he took an interest in our claim to the stumpage in the minister’s sixteenths of Gore A, next No. 7, in the 10th Range.  He never made any speeches, and always voted with the minority, which was what he was sent to do.  He made me and himself a great many good friends, some of whom I did not afterwards recognize as quickly as Dennis did my parishioners.  On one or two occasions, when there was wood to saw at home, I kept him at home; but I took those occasions to go to Augusta myself.  Finding myself often in his vacant seat at these times, I watched the proceedings with a good deal of care; and once was so much excited that I delivered my somewhat celebrated speech on the Central School District question, a speech of which the State of Maine printed some extra copies.  I believe there is no formal rule permitting strangers to speak; but no one objected.

Dennis himself, as I said, never spoke at all.  But our experience this session led me to think, that if, by some such “general understanding” as the reports speak of in legislation daily, every member of Congress might leave a double to sit through those deadly sessions and answer to roll-calls and do the legitimate party-voting, which appears stereotyped in the regular list of Ashe, Bocock, Black, etc., we should gain decidedly in working power.  As things stand, the saddest state prison I ever visit is that Representatives’ Chamber in Washington.  If a man leaves for an hour, twenty “correspondents” may be howling, “Where was Mr. Prendergast when the Oregon bill passed?” And if poor Prendergast stays there!  Certainly, the worst use you can make of a man is to put him in prison!

I know, indeed, that public men of the highest rank have resorted to this expedient long ago.  Dumas’s novel of The Iron Mask turns on the brutal imprisonment of Louis the Fourteenth’s double.  There seems little doubt, in our own history, that it was the real General Pierce who shed tears when the delegate from Lawrence explained to him the sufferings of the people there—­and only General Pierce’s double who had given the orders for the assault on that town, which was invaded the next day.  My charming friend, George Withers, has, I am almost sure, a double, who preaches his afternoon sermons for him.  This is the reason that the theology often varies so from that of the forenoon.  But that double is almost as charming as the original.  Some of the most well-defined men, who stand out most prominently on the background of history, are in this way stereoscopic men; who owe their distinct relief to the slight differences between the doubles.  All this I know.  My present suggestion is simply the great extension of the system, so that all public machine-work may be done by it.