“Sir,” returns Aaron, preserving a thin shimmer of politeness, “sir, by these ceremonies, through which we have romped so deeply to your gratification, I confess I have been quite as much bored as impressed. There is something cheap, something antic and senseless to it all—as though we were sylvan apes! What are these wondrous ceremonies? Why then, the President ‘addresses> the Senate, the Senate ‘addresses’ the President; neither says anything, neither means anything, and the whole exchange comes to be no more than just an empty barter of bad English.” This last, in view of the fact that Aaron himself is the architect of the address of the Senate, sounds liberal, and not at all conceited. He goes on: “I must say, sir, that my little dip into government, confined as it has been to these marvelous ceremonies, leaves me with a poorer opinion of my country than I brought here. As for the ceremonies themselves, I should call them now about as edifying as the banging and the booming of a brace of Chinese gongs.”
Washington’s brow is red, his eye cold, as he bows a formal leave to Aaron when he departs with the others. Plainly, the views of the young successor to the rusty Schuyler, concerning addresses of ceremony, have not been lost upon him.
“I think,” mutters Aaron, icily complacent—“I think I pricked him.”
CHAPTER XII—IDLENESS AND BLACK RESOLVES
AARON finds a Senate existence inexpressibly dull. He writes his Theodosia: “There is nothing to do here. Everybody is idle; and, so far as I see, the one occupation of a senator is to lie sunning himself in his own effulgence. My colleague, Rufus King, and others I might name, succeed in that way in passing their days very pleasantly. For myself, not having their sublime imagination, and being perhaps better acquainted with my own measure, I find this sitting in the sunshine of self a failure.”
Mindful of his issue, Aaron offers a resolution throwing open the Senate doors. The Senate, whose notion of greatness is a notion of exclusion, votes it down. Aaron warns his puffball brothers of the toga:
“Be assured,” says he, “you fool no one by such trumpery tricks as this key-turning. You succeed only in bringing republican institutions into contempt, and getting yourselves laughed at where you are not condemned.”
Aaron reintroduces his open-door resolution; in the end he passes it. Galleries are thrown up in the chamber, and all who will may watch the Senate as it proceeds upon the transaction of its dignified destinies. At this but few come; whereupon the Senate feels abashed. It is not, it discovers, the thrilling spectacle its puffball fancy painted.