majority report. Closing sentence:

"Providence seems to further our efforts."

(Signed,) "ABNER DILWORTHY, U. S. S.,

per WASHINGTON HAWKINS, P. S."

At the end of a week, Washington was able to send the happy news,

officially, as usual,--that the needed vote had been added and the bill

favorably reported from the Committee. Other letters recorded its perils

in Committee of the whole, and by and by its victory, by just the skin of

its teeth, on third reading and final passage. Then came letters telling

of Mr. Dilworthy's struggles with a stubborn majority in his own

Committee in the Senate; of how these gentlemen succumbed, one by one,

till a majority was secured.

Then there was a hiatus. Washington watched every move on the board,

and

he was in a good position to do this, for he was clerk of this committee,

and also one other. He received no salary as private secretary, but

these two clerkships, procured by his benefactor, paid him an aggregate

of twelve dollars a day, without counting the twenty percent extra

compensation which would of course be voted to him on the last night of

the session.

He saw the bill go into Committee of the whole and struggle for its life

again, and finally worry through. In the fullness of time he noted its

256

The Gilded Age