Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/131



HE new government was now in full swing and a saturnalia began. Amos Hogg was Governor, Simon Legree Speaker of the House, and the Hon. Tim Shelby leader of the majority on the floor of the House.

Raleigh, the quaint little City of Oaks, never saw such an assemblage of gather in the grey stone Capitol.

Ezra Perkins, who was a member of the Senate, was frugal in his habits and found lodgings at an unpretentious boarding house near the Capitol square.

The room was furnished with six iron cots on which were placed straw mattresses and six honourable members of the new Legislature occupied these. They were close enough together to allow a bottle of whiskey to be freely passed from member to member at any hour of the night. They thought the beds were arranged with this in view and were much pleased.

Ezra was the only man of the crowd who arrived in Raleigh with a valise or trunk. He had a carpet bag. The others simply had one shirt and a few odds and ends tied in red bandana handkerchiefs.

Three of them had walked all the way to Raleigh and kept in the woods from habit as deserters. The other two rode on the train and handed their tickets to the first stranger they saw on the platform of the car they boarded.