Mr. Noble—“Then will the Committee ask the question?”
The Chairman—“The Committee will—when it desires to know.”
Mr. Noble—“Which will not be during this century perhaps.”
The Chairman—“Another remark like that, sir, will procure you the attentions of the Sergeant-at-arms.”
Mr. Noble—“D—n the Sergeant-at-arms, and the Committee too!”
Several Committeemen—“Mr. Chairman, this is Contempt!”
Mr. Noble—“Contempt of whom?”
“Of the Committee! Of the Senate of the United States!”
Mr. Noble—“Then I am become the acknowledged representative of a nation. You know as well as I do that the whole nation hold as much as three-fifths of the United States Senate in entire contempt.—Three-fifths of you are Dilworthys.”
The Sergeant-at-arms very soon put a quietus upon the observations of the representative of the nation, and convinced him that he was not in the over-free atmosphere of his Happy-Land-of-Canaan: