they wore a blue dress coat or brass buttons; they were Roman.
The type of Senator in 1850 was rather charming at its best, and
the Senate, when in good temper, was an agreeable body, numbering
only some sixty members, and affecting the airs of courtesy. Its
vice was not so much a vice of manners or temper as of attitude.
The statesman of all periods was apt to be pompous, but even
pomposity was less offensive than familiarity -- on the platform
as in the pulpit -- and Southern pomposity, when not arrogant,
was genial and sympathetic, almost quaint and childlike in its
simple-mindedness; quite a different thing from the Websterian or
Conklinian pomposity of the North. The boy felt at ease there,
more at home than he had ever felt in Boston State House, though
his acquaintance with the codfish in the House of Representatives
went back beyond distinct recollection. Senators spoke kindly to
him, and seemed to feel so, for they had known his family
socially; and, in spite of slavery, even J. Q. Adams in his later
years, after he ceased to stand in the way of rivals, had few
personal enemies. Decidedly the Senate, pro-slavery though it
were, seemed a friendly world.

This first step in national politics was a little like the walk
before breakfast; an easy, careless, genial, enlarging stride
into a fresh and amusing world, where nothing was finished, but
where even the weeds grew rank. The second step was like the
first, except that it led to the White House. He was taken to see
President Taylor. Outside, in a paddock in front, "Old Whitey,"
the President's charger, was grazing, as they entered; and
inside, the President was receiving callers as simply as if he
were in the paddock too. The President was friendly, and the boy
felt no sense of strangeness that he could ever recall. In fact,