Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/57

Rh those held by the ones who had now addressed him, they might nevertheless rest assured that a conscientious conviction alone had guided him.”

There, gentlemen, in February, 1869, just before he took his seat in the Senate of the United States, to which the great-heartedness of Missouri had confidingly elected him, you see the foreshadowing of the purpose in the future to form new ties different from those that connected him with those who presented him that address that night.

Well, sir, this is a grave thing. It must have been difficult for my colleague to overcome the kind collegiality of his feelings toward me when he carefully cut out that damning piece of evidence, with a certainty to use it some day as proof of my treachery to my party. But I ask you, sir, to imagine my situation. Oh, if I had known when in the meantime I held sweet and pleasant converse with my colleague, and he was making me glad with his winning smiles, that in his bosom he was carrying something far more dangerous than a loaded pistol—a loaded pocket-book; something like a paper torpedo, ready at any moment to vomit forth destruction upon me—had I known that, what would my feelings have been! Imagine it, sir, as I can well imagine how carefully my colleague kept that trusty weapon in his pocket-book for twenty long months, and how, when the great moment had finally come, he went to the President, and, with sorrow and anguish in his eye, performed the most painful duty of unfolding to the Executive this most conclusive proof of my long-plotted and deliberate crime! Ay, sir, what would my feelings have been had I known that!

But what would my colleague's feelings have been had he known that the precious paper torpedo in his pocket-book, so carefully picked up and so lovingly preserved, was nothing but a weapon loaded with sawdust after all;