only are required. These also are arranged in a horseshoe form, and
face the President; but there was a sad array of empty chairs when I
was in Washington, nineteen or twenty seats being vacant in
consequence of secession. In this house the Vice-President of the
United States acts as President, but has by no means so hard a job
of work as his brother on the other side of the way. Mr. Hannibal
Hamlin, from Maine, now fills this chair. I was driven, while in
Washington, to observe something amounting almost to a peculiarity
in the Christian names of the gentlemen who were then administrating
the government of the country. Mr. Abraham Lincoln was the
President; Mr. Hannibal Hamlin, the Vice-President; Mr. Galusha
Grow, the Speaker of the House of Representatives; Mr. Salmon Chase,
the Secretary of the Treasury; Mr. Caleb Smith, the Attorney-
General; Mr. Simon Cameron, the Secretary of War; and Mr. Gideon
Welles, the Secretary of the Navy.

In the Senate House, as in the other house, there are very
commodious galleries for strangers, running round the entire
chambers, and these galleries are open to all the world. As with
all such places in the States, a large portion of them is
appropriated to ladies. But I came at last to find that the word
lady signified a female or a decently dressed man. Any arrangement
for classes is in America impossible; the seats intended for
gentlemen must, as a matter of course, be open to all men; but by
giving up to the rougher sex half the amount of accommodation
nominally devoted to ladies, the desirable division is to a certain
extent made. I generally found that I could obtain admittance to
the ladies' gallery if my coat were decent and I had gloves with me.

All the adjuncts of both these chambers are rich and in good