tion was soon held to fill the vacancy caused by his resignation, and he was elected by a unanimous vote. Once more,

The committee of investigation appointed by the house of representatives reported resolutions of expulsion against Brooks, and censure against Keitt and Edmundson. The resolution to expel Brooks received, after a violent debate, one hundred and twenty-one votes, and there were ninety-five votes in the negative; a two-thirds vote being required to expel a member, the resolution failed. The resolution of censure passed. Mr. Hoffman, of Maryland, was the only southern member who voted to expel Brooks.

namely, on the eighth of January, 1857, he made a characteristic speech on the floor of congress, against the prohibition of slavery in Nebraska. But his career was suddenly terminated, on the twentyseventh of the same month. His sickness was brief-inflammation of the throatand he expired in terrible pain. In the intensity of his sufferings from strangulation, he endeavored to tear open his throat, that he might get breath. He was but thirty-eight years old, and left a wife and four children. His frame was pronounced, by the undertaker, the largest for which he had ever been called upon to furnish a coffin.

Brooks, however, stung by the rebuke conveyed by the vote of a majority of the house, made a speech of coarse defiance, in which he said, "If I desired to kill the senator from Massachusetts, why did I not do it? You all admit that I had it in my power. Let me tell you, that, expressly to prevent taking life, I used an ordinary cane presented by a friend in Baltimore. I went to the senate deliberately. I hesitated whether I should use a horse whip or a cowhide, but knowing that the strength of the senator from Massachusetts was superior to mine, I thought he might wrest it from me. If he had, I might have done what I should have regretted for the remainder of my life. (A voice: He would (A voice: He would have killed him!) Ten days ago, foreseeing what the action of the house would be, my resignation was put into the hands of the governor of South Carolina. And now, Mr. Speaker, I announce to you and to the house, I am no longer a member of the thirty-fourth congress." Senators Butler and Mason sat near Brooks during the delivery of his speech of the tone of which the preceding brief sentences afford some idea,—and were quite merry over it. Mr. Brooks retired amid the applause of the south gallery, which was filled with ladies and gentlemen, and, upon reaching the lobby, was embraced and showered with kisses by the ladies.

Only four months after the decease of Brooks, Senator Butler died at Edgefield court-house, S. C., in the sixty-first year of his age. Keitt met his death during the war of the rebellion, he being at the time an officer in the confederate army.

Returning home to South Carolina, Brooks was feted and feasted, and made the recipient of every possible mark of

From the very first, Mr. Sumner's condition was critical in the extreme, so much so, that his physicians considered the chances to be against his recovery, and visitors were peremptorily forbidden to see him. His head and the glands of the neck became swollen, the cuts soon ulcerated, and there was a constant torturing pain in the head. An appearance of erysipelas presented itself, a form of inflammation greatly to be dreaded. As soon as he could be removed with safety, he was

carried into the country, remaining for some time under the hospitable roof of Hon. F. P. Blair, at Silver Spring. In the spring of 1857, he went to Europe by the advice of his physicians, and there passed some months, returning in the autumn, with a view to engaging in his public duties.

Undervaluing, however, the seriousness of his condition, Mr. Sumner's anticipations of active usefulness were not to be so speedily realized. At the time of the assault upon him, he failed to comprehend the full extent and peculiar nature of the injury received, and continued to cherish, from the outset, the constant hope of an early restoration to sound health. But the spring of 1858 found him still in such impaired health, as to necessitate another visit to Europe, principally with a view to the curative influences of travel, exercise in the open air, and absence from political excitement. At Paris, he met Dr. George Hayward, the eminent Boston surgeon, who at once urged 'active treatment 'that is, the application of a system of counter-irritants, in order to reach the malady in the cerebral system and in the spine. With the sanction of Doctor Hayward, Mr. Sumner then put himself in the hands of Doctor Brown-Sequard, the celebrated physiologist, so well known, on both sides of the Atlantic, for his success in diseases of the spine and nervous system.

A careful and acute investigation of Mr. Sumner's case, by this eminent surgeon, resulted in ascertaining that, though the brain itself was free from any serious remaining injury, the effects of the original commotion there were still manifest in an effusion of liquid about the brain and in a slight degree of congestion, chiefly confined to the membrane around the brain; it was also found that the spine was suffering in two places from the effect of what is called contre-coup. Mr. Sumner being seated and inclined over his desk at the time of the assault, the blows on his head took effect by counter-stroke, or communicated shock in the spine. Doctor

Brown-Sequard agreed with Doctor Hayward, as to the necessity of an active treatment, doubting very much whether any degree of care or lapse of time, unless the morbid condition of the system were directly acted upon, would not always leave the patient exposed to a relapse. He proceeded, therefore, at once, to apply fire to the back of the neck and along the spine. "I have applied "—writes M. Sequard to a friend, at this time "six moxas to Senator Sumner's neck and back, and he has borne these exceedingly painful applications with the greatest courage and patience. You know that a 'moxa' is a burning of the skin with inflamed agaric (amadou,) cotton wool, or some other very combustible substance. I had never seen a man bearing with such a fortitude as Mr. Sumner has shown, the extremely violent pain of this kind of burning." The recovery, by Mr. Sumner, of his general health, from the original shock, was due to what his English and French physicians called the wonderful recuperative energies of his constitution and to a remarkable power of resistance to injury. It was this, too, in alliance with his untouched vigor of will, that enabled Mr. Sumner to bear the moxa without the chloroform which Doctor Sequard recommended, and without the shrinking which the doctor expected.

This severe medical treatment was succeeded by that of baths and other remedial resorts. In a letter written by Mr. Sumner, in September, 1858, he says: "My life is devoted to my health. I wish that I could say that I am not still an invalid; but, except when attacked by the pain in my chest, I am now comfortable, and enjoy my baths, my walks, and the repose and incognito which I find here. I begin the day with douches, hot and cold, and when thoroughly exhausted, am wrapped in sheet and blanket, and conveyed to my hotel and laid on my bed. After my walk, I find myself obliged again to take to my bed, for two hours before dinner. But this whole treatment is in pleasant contrast with the protracted sufferings from fire which made my summer

a torment.

And yet I fear that I must return again to that treatment. It is with a pang unspeakable that I find myself thus arrested in the labors of life and in the duties of my position." It was not until the autumn of 1859, that Mr. Sumner was sufficiently restored in health, to justify him in returning home and resuming his seat in the senate.

Though originally elected to the United States senate by a majority of only one vote, in a legislature composed of several hundred members, and not even then

until after many and wearisome ballotings, running through several weeks, he was almost unanimously re-elected in 1857; again, in 1863, with but few dissentient votes; and again, in 1869, with similar unanimity;-making a period of twentyfour consecutive years, and by which he became "the Father of the Senate," in point of protracted official service. He died, in office, in 1874. The fame of his career, as statesman, orator, and philanthropist, may be said to be world-wide. Such are time's impressive changes.

40

before reaching the back part of the neck. The whole gave the impression that the ligature had been applied from behind and that the neck had been drawn backward.

On the announcement that so frightful and mysterious a murder had been committed upon the person of so noted a professional citizen, the agitation of the community was indescribable. Nor was it long before the information became widely known, that Doctor Burdell's landlady, Mrs. Cunningham, sustained the relation of mistress to him, that she claimed to have been secretly married to him, that she was sufficiently unscrupulous and strongminded to engage in an intrigue against his fortune if not his person; and that the house, though respectable and aristocratic externally, was, within, the scene of continual bickerings, hostilities, jealousies, and schemes-of espionage through keyholes, of larcenies of papers, of suspicions. among the servants, of quarrels in the entries, and of indecorums in the chambers. Though Doctor Burdell was the owner of this house, it was not his boarding-house, the whole dwelling-with the exception of the doctor's office-being occupied by Mrs. Cunningham and her children, together with a few boarders and lodgers.

Almost immediately, suspicion fastened upon the inmates of the house, and this feeling deepened into conviction, as the coroner's investigation progressed. The substance of this testimony was, that Doctor Burdell, whose mistress Mrs. Cunningham was known to have been, was not at the time of his decease on good terms with her, and considered that he stood in danger of his life from her and her family. She wanted him to marry her, was actually married by Rev. Mr. Marvine to some man who personated Doctor Burdell, and Mrs. Cunningham declared in her evidence on the inquest that she was Mrs. Burdell; but various circumstances went to show that Burdell was not the man, and that the certificate of marriage was based upon a fraud. One month after this marriage, Mrs. Cunningham desired her attorney to renew a suit

against Burdell for breach of promise; said suit having been withdrawn previ ously, on terms favorable to Mrs. Cunningham. This fact seemed to dispose of the alleged marriage, and to convict Mrs. Cunningham of having, on the morning after Burdell's death, fraudulently assumed to be his widow. It also appeared that Burdell, from his great animosity to, and fear of the Cunninghams, desired to get them out of his house, gave them notice to quit, and was to have leased the house to another party named Stansbury, on the day following the one on which he was murdered,—an arrangement which, if carried into effect, would have rendered Mrs. Cunningham and her daughters destitute and without a home. Finally, a loaded revolver and a safe-key were found in Mrs. Cunningham's possession, which belonged to Doctor Burdell.

On the evidence thus elicited, Mrs. Cunningham, and Messrs. Eckel and Snodgrass, two of her boarders, were committed to prison, as parties concerned in the frightful deed. Mr. Eckel was a man of thirty-four years, being just two years. younger than Mrs. Cunningham; and Snodgrass was a young man of about twenty. They each and all protested their entire innocence, and Mrs. Cunningham, from the very first, carried out her assumed ignorance and guiltlessness of the murder with an adroitness which, judged by the subsequent developments in the case, must be regarded as unequaled in the annals of crime. Thus, on first being informed of the news of the murder, she began to cry most piteously. Mr. Snodgrass held her awhile on the bed. Mrs. Cunningham then seemed crazy, and tore her hair vehemently. Doctor Main, who entered the room immediately after the family is supposed to have first heard of the dreadful tragedy, stated that the youngest of the two young ladies lay across the bed, and appeared to be in great agony, Mrs. Cunningham at the same time exclaiming, "He is dead, and I always liked him, and thought a great deal of him." William Cunningham testified