State Legislation 109 



Mike Shaunnessy, phwat do you mane by quotin' 

 Latin on the flure of this House, when you don't 

 know the alpha and omayga of the language!" and 

 back he walked, leaving the Judge in humiliated 

 submission behind him. 



The Judge was always falling foul of the Consti- 

 tution. Once, when defending one of his bills which 

 made a small but wholly indefensible appropriation 

 of State money for a private purpose, he asserted 

 "that the Constitution didn't touch little things like 

 that"; and on another occasion he remarked to me 

 that he "never allowed the Constitution to come 

 between friends." 



The Colonel was at that time cliairman of a com- 

 mittee, before which there sometimes came questions 

 affecting the interests or supposed interests of labor. 

 The committee was hopelessly bad in its composi- 

 tion, most of the members being either very corrupt 

 or exceedingly inefficient. The Colonel generally 

 kept order with a good deal of dignity; indeed, 

 when, as not infrequently happened, he had looked 

 upon the rye that was flavored with lemon-peel, his 

 sense of personal dignity grew till it became fairly 

 majestic, and he ruled the committee with a rod of 

 iron. At one time a bill had been introduced (one 

 of the several score of preposterous measures that 

 annually make their appearance purely for purposes 

 of buncombe), by whose terms all laborers on the 

 public works of great cities were to receive three dol- 

 lars a day double the market price of labor. To 

 this bill, by the way, an amendment was afterward 



