the noble pioneers of Iowa, of whom Judge Wright was one of the oldest and the noblest.

Chancellor McClain portrayed the public life of Judge Wright as he was familiar with it during the period of his service in the United States Senate:

My recollection of him goes back twenty years to the beginning of his last two years as Senator when I became the clerk of the committee on claims of which he was chairman, and therefore also his private secretary. It was already settled in accordance with his determination to retire from public life and devote his energies to the practice of his profession and the accumulation of a modest competency for his declining years, that he would not be a candidate for reëlection, and he had no object save to discharge faithfully and creditably the duties of his office, and yet he gave to those duties patient and painstaking care which could not have been greater had he been an anxious candidate for reëlection. I will not say that he did not at times feel a natural regret that his public career of more than twenty-five years was drawing to a close, but when he was urged by those who had long been his friends and whose wishes and judg ment had great weight with him, to reconsider his determination and allow his name to come before the Legislature of Iowa in connection with the succession to the Senatorship, he had but one unhesitating answer. His pledge was already given and tnere could be no reconsideration.

It was under these circumstances, then, that he settled down at the beginning of the session of 1875-6 in very modest apartments in an unpretentious house on Four and one-half street a quiet little "place," as it would be called in Boston, though near the center of the area of official and business activity of the city. His rooms, which would hardly be considered luxurious either in extent or furnishings for a couple of collegiate seniors, consisted of a parlor, reception room, study, and dining room, all in one, and that not a large one, and a chamber adjoining, into which he frequently was compelled to take a fellow Senator who called for a private consultation, because the study was occupied by some Iowa friend who had dropped in to read the home papers, with which the floor was usually covered. I may say in passing that his surroundings during the next session were more cheerful, for he had Mrs. Wright with him, and their younger daughter, and a niece: so there were more commodious quarters and a more homelike life, though the program as to disposition of time was not materially different.

The place on Four and one-half street was convenient to the line of bob-tailed horse cars on F street which used to run to the Capitol in one direction and to the department buildings flanking the White House in the other, and by this means of transit he was usually by nine o'clock either at the Capitol to attend a meeting of some committee or at one of the depart

ments soliciting positions for some of his constituents; for the latter duty was then and still is imposed by public sentiment upon the State's Representatives in the Senate, as well as upon those in the House, and its faithful discharge was, and still is, insisted upon with greater rigor than that of participation in the making of laws. The sessions of the Senate, commencing at noon, extended until four or five o'clock. Then after dinner came the writing of letters, the preparation of reports in connection with committee work, and the investigation of such questions coming up in the Senate as required attention.

It was a busy, and in many respects a wearing life. Callers after dinner were often those who were seeking places for themselves or others, with a persistence that made a negative answer inconclusive unless couched in stern and unfriendly tones. Judge Wright's position as chairman of the claims committee subjected him to special importunities, for the claims which come before Congress are those which have been rejected by the various tribunals specially constituted to consider the legitimate demands against the government, and are urged on other grounds than those which could be properly urged before a court.

Among these applications for position or relief were many which appealed very strongly to a man of tender heart, a man who felt that he owed a duty to his suffering and needy fellowman not measured or limited by his self interest, and yet there was the constant realization of a danger that the interest or even the necessities of the individual might be inconsistent with public good, and that private or public fraud might be seeking to profit by an ingenious appeal to disinterested benevolence.

The first session of the Forty-fourth Congress was protracted to an unprecedented length by the impeachment trial of Gen. Belknap and when the members reassembled in December they had to face the paralyzing apprehension of civil strife by reason of the contest between the supporters respectively of Hayes and Tilden, as to which was lawfully elected to the presidency. Judge Wright introduced early in the session a bill to provide a court for the trial of such contests and made a vigorous appeal for the adoption of some measure which should secure a peaceful settlement of the controversy. When the plan for the appointment of the electoral commission was proposed he gave it hearty and earnest support in which Senator Allison joined. But the Republicans of Iowa were impatient of a measure which from their point of view would render doubtful a victory already won, and both by public protests and private appeals sought to prevent the adoption of what they considered a compromise. But those in Congress who loved country better than party faced partisan denunciation on either side and helped to furnish perhaps the strongest proof to be found in our national history that the people of the United States are entitled to enjoy the blessings of freedom and union. Judge Wright stands to me and I think to all who have known him well, as representing the highest type of American citizenship in both public and private life. As a public servant he was a judge zealous to do justice

and yet fully imbued with that conservatism which sees in uniformity and certainty of administration the highest justice; a statesman with profound veneration for our institutions, deeming that loyalty to them was above loyalty to mere party, while at the same time he found in party organization the best means for promoting the general good. As a friend he was warm-hearted and faithful. As a man he was true to every duty. His sympathies were as broad as humanity, as deep as sorrow sinks, as high as aspiration soars. He was grave with the experiences of a long life, but hopeful too, with perennial youth.

A WINTER NIGHT ON THE OPEN PRAIRIE.

BY CHARLES ALDRICH.

T was not an infrequent thing for men during the early years of settlement in Iowa, to be frozen to death by exposure at night on the bleak, open prairies. One reason for these casualties was, that so many came west from sheltered, timbered regions, where most people had good houses, and were not exposed to severe and protracted storms, and, therefore, were not schooled in the vigilance necessary to contend with western blizzards. They wore lighter clothing, and carelessly ventured out long distances with very few wraps to keep out the cold. Many of our winter days were so pleasant and mild that we took these chances with little expectation that the weather would change. But it often occurred that when the forenoons would be so mild that a flake of snow would melt as it struck the ground, the same afternoon, and perhaps three or four days in succession, would see a wild, tumultuous storm from the northwest howling and careering over the prairies, leaving deep snow drifts and low temperature throughout its course. In such cases woe to the unfortunate wayfarer who found himself a few miles from home when darkness fell upon him, or the storm became so thick as to hide his path and obscure his vision! I had one

experience of this kind—though fortunately not in a stormwhich opened my eyes so wide that I never afterwards took any chances in venturing out upon the prairies. If necessary to travel some distance in the winter, I always went prepared to "camp out"-with abundant food and blankets for myself and the horses—wherever night should overtake me, with no fear of freezing.

I was publishing The Freeman in Webster City in the autumn of 1859. There was no paper north of me to the State line, nor anywhere else northwest of our town. I used to visit the county seats where no newspaper men had yet ventured to settle, for the purpose of soliciting the official printing of the counties. Among other trips I started on the third of December, to visit the counties of Cerro Gordo, Worth, Winnebago and Hancock. The outfit, when I tell what it was, will be seen to have been a very poor one for such a trip. I had for a travelling companion, Sam. H. Lunt, soon after Deputy Register of the State Land Office, who later on died in the military service. We had a single buggy, with a poor old "Rosinante" of a horse, and only one worn buffalo robe and a blanket. I wore an overcoat of medium weight and had a heavy shawl, but Sam. had only a single coat. The weather had been surpassingly mild and beautiful, and that is what deceived us. We had many of those winter days so poetically described by William Cullen Bryant, which “tempt the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home." The morning we started there was hardly even a suggestion of frost. The snow was scarcely an inch deep anywhere, and in most places was disappearing in the warm sunshine. Our trail, for there was not much in the line of roads, led in a northeasterly course across Wright county. There was still open water in some portions of Wall Lake, so mild had been the weather. By the time night overtook us we had reached Belmond, which was, or had been, one of the oscillating county seats of Wright county. We stayed all night at a very primitive hotel, kept by an eccentric gentleman by the

name of Kent. He was sometimes called "Chancellor Kent," from the claim he made that he had been Chancellor of New

Jersey or some other eastern State. He was a great story teller, and it needed more credulity than I possessed to believe some of his yarns. He claimed acquaintance with almost every distinguished living man in the nation, and was in the habit of calling them by "nicknames." When speaking of President Buchanan, he called him "Jim." Mentioning Stephen A. Douglas, "the Little Giant" of Illinois, the great ideal Democratic statesman of the West, he called him "Steve." Said he, "I was walking down Pennsylvania Avenue one morning with Jim."

I inquired, "Jim who?"

“Why,” said he, “Jim Buchanan, of course. Pretty soon we met Steve!"

"Steve who?" I asked.

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Why Steve Douglas," he said. And he spoke of General Samuel Houston, of Texas, as "Sam," General Benton, of Missouri, as "Tom," and so on through a long list of American statesmen. He also professed great familiarity with European capitals, as St. Petersburgh, Berlin, Rome, and I suppose, if the conversation had been protracted enough, he would have swung around the circle of the whole world in a similar way.

The next morning was quite as pleasant as the first, with the exception that the snow was now two or three inches deep. Our trail lay up the Iowa river, to the county seat of Hancock county. This consisted simply of the residence of Mr. Rosecrans, a cousin, or nephew, I believe, of General W. S. Rosecrans, who became distinguished during the civil war. This was in the old county Judge days, when many of those officers in northwestern Iowa stole their counties absolutely poor by letting contracts to build bridges and court houses, in some instances pensioning their needy relatives upon the county treasury. In each county the Judge was a local autocrat, and wielded irresponsible and almost absolute power. Judge