158 POLITICAL LIFE-VII 



hood when, having found a knob of glass, twisted, striated 

 with different colors, and filled with air bubbles, I enjoyed 

 looking at the landscape through it. Everything became 

 grotesquely transfigured. A cabbage in the foreground 

 became opalescent, and an ear of corn a mass of jewels, 

 but the whole atmosphere above and beyond was lurid, and 

 the chimneys and church spires were topsy-turvy. 



The only other person whose talk ever produced an im- 

 pression of this sort on me was Tolstoy, and he will be 

 discussed in another chapter. 



McDougal's peculiarity made him at last unbearable; 

 so much so that the Senate was obliged to take measures 

 against him. His speech in his own defense showed the 

 working of his mind, and one passage most of all. It re- 

 mains probably the best defense of drunkenness ever 

 made, and it ran as follows : 



"Mr. President, I pity the man who has never viewed 

 the affairs of this world, save from the poor, low, miser- 

 able plane of ordinary sobriety. " 



My absence in the West Indies covered the first three 

 months of the year 1871, and then the commission re- 

 turned to Washington and made its report ; but regarding 

 this I shall speak at length in the chapter of my diplo- 

 matic experiences, devoted to the Santo Domingo question. 



