“No; still, as things are now, we cannot judge of the moral worth of a community by the man sent from it to Congress.  Representatives show merely the strength of parties.  The candidate chosen in party primary meetings is not selected because he is the best man they have, and the one fittest to legislate wisely in national affairs; but he who happens to have the strongest personal friends among those who nominate, or who is most likely to poll the highest vote.  This is why we find,’ in Congress, such a large preponderance of tenth-rate men.”

“A man such as you represent Judge Lyman to be would sell his country, like another Arnold.”

“Yes; if the bid were high enough.”

“Does he gamble?”

“Gambling, I might say, is a part of his profession.  Very few nights pass, I am told, without finding him at the gaming-table.”

I heard no more.  At all this, I was not in the least surprised; for my knowledge of the man’s antecedents had prepared me for allegations quite as bad as these.

During the week I spent at the Federal Capital, I had several opportunities of seeing Judge Lyman, in the House and out of it,—­ in the House only when the yeas and nays were called on some important measure, or a vote taken on a bill granting special privileges.  In the latter case, his vote, as I noticed, was generally cast on the affirmative side.  Several times I saw him staggering on the Avenue, and once brought into the House for the purpose of voting, in so drunken a state, that he had to be supported to his seat.  And even worse than this—­when his name was called, he was asleep, and had to be shaken several times before he was sufficiently aroused to give his vote!

Happily, for the good of his country, it was his last winter in Washington.  At the next session, a better man took his place.

Two years from the period of my last visit to Cedarville, I found myself approaching that quiet village again.  As the church-spire came in view, and house after house became visible, here und there, standing out in pleasant relief against the green background of woods and fields, all the exciting events which rendered my last visit so memorable, came up fresh in my mind.  I was yet thinking of Willy Hammond’s dreadful death, and of his broken-hearted mother, whose life went out with his, when the stage rolled by their old homestead.  Oh, what a change was here!  Neglect, decay, and dilapidation were visible, let the eye fall where it would.  The fences were down, here and there; the hedges, once so green and nicely trimmed, had grown rankly in some places, but were stunted and dying in others; all the beautiful walks were weedy and grass-grown, and the box-borders dead; the garden, rainbow-hued in its wealth of choice and beautiful flowers when I first saw it, was lying waste,—­a rooting-ground for hogs.  A glance at the house showed a broken chimney, the bricks unremoved from the spot where they struck the ground;