collected, are nearly all gone, and if, by any means, the bill should
fail in the Senate, I shall return to New York with the _fraction of a
dollar_ in my pocket."

And now the final struggle which meant success or failure was on. Only
eight days of the session remained and the calendar was, as usual,
crowded. The inventor, his nerves stretched to the breaking point, hoped
and yet feared. He had every reason to believe that the Senate would show
more broad-minded enlightenment than the House, and yet he had been told
that his bill would pass the House by acclamation, while the event proved
that it had barely squeezed through by a beggarly majority of six. He
heard disquieting rumors of a determination on the part of some of the
House members to procure the defeat of the bill in the Senate. Would they
succeed, would the victory, almost won, be snatched from him at the last
moment, or would his faith in an overruling Providence, and in his own
mission as an instrument of that Providence, be justified at last?

Every day of that fateful week saw him in his place in the gallery of the
Senate chamber, and all day long he sat there, listening, as we can well
imagine, with growing impatience to the senatorial oratory on the merits
or demerits of bills which to him were of such minor importance, however
heavily freighted with the destinies of the nation they may have been.
And every night he returned to his room with the sad reflection that one
more of the precious days had passed and his bill had not been reached.
And then came the last day, March 3, that day when the session of the
Senate is prolonged till midnight, when the President, leaving the White
House, sits in the room provided for him at the Capitol, ready to sign
the bills which are passed in these last few hurried hours, if they meet
with his approval, or to consign them to oblivion if they do not.