In Memoriam

At 11:30 o'clock one morning last week the U. S. Marine band assembled in the House lobby, played funereal tunes. Promptly at noon the musicians packed up their instruments and departed. At the same hour Speaker Byrns, in striped trousers and cutaway, called the House to order and recessed it to hold the annual memorial service for dead Congressmen. As he did so, into the chamber filed Representatives Ulysses S. (for Samuel) Guyer of Kansas, John J. O'Connor of New York and Mary T. Norton of New Jersey. Behind them filed Mrs. Thomas David Schall, widow of the late Senator from Minnesota, in full mourning; Madam Senator Long, widow of the late Senator Huey Pierce Long; a dozen other relatives of the seven Congressmen who had died in the last year.

The House Chaplain, Rev. James Shera Montgomery, to whom the annual memorial service is his one big occasion, closed his eyes, upturned his face, lifted his clasped hands toward the ceiling and began : "Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open. . . ." A chord was struck on a small, cheap piano that stood beside the rostrum and Dorothy Reddish, a young woman employed by the Washington Telephone Company, sang There Is No Death. "The Lord Is My Shepherd. . . ." For ten minutes Chaplain Montgomery gave the mourners his best. Then Patrick J. Haltigan, House reading clerk, began : "Huey Pierce Long, Senator from the State of Louisiana. Lawyer; railroad commissioner; member of the Public Service Commission, State of Louisiana; Governor; elected to the U. S. Senate, Nov. 4, 1930. Died Sept. 10, 1935."'

As the clerk read, Mrs. Norton took a large American Beauty rose, labeled "Huey Pierce Long," from a small page and placed it in a large silver vase furnished for the occasion by a florist. One by one, as the roll of the dead was called, she added six other roses labeled Thomas David Schall, R. Garden, Charles Vilas , Truax, Henry Mahlon Kimball, Wesley Lloyd, Stephen Andrew Rudd.

There followed one minute of devotional silence. Then Representative Guyer, onetime high-school principal, onetime judge, onetime mayor of Kansas City, Kans., presented the Republican tribute to the dead. He quoted Felicia Hemans, Tennyson, Shakespeare (twice), Joseph Addison, William Cullen Bryant, William Winter. He drew on three foreign tongues: from Dante, Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate; from Bishop Jean Baptiste Massillon's funeral oration over Louis Quatorze, Dieu seul est grand; from a "lucid saying" of the Romans, Sic transit gloria mundi. Two he translated for the benefit of his less cultured colleagues.

His memorial speech began with a joint apostrophe to Speaker Byrns and Death:

"Mr. Speaker:

Leaves have their time to fall And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath And stars to set; but all, Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!

"Veneration for the sepulchre and reverence for the dead belong to the most ancient instincts of the human race. . . . This day the discord of party passion divides us not. ... . There are no minority views in this committee's report. It is accepted by unanimous consent without debate. That report constitutes the epitaph of ... seven strong men. . . . Their roll calls have all been answered. Their speeches have all been uttered. Their offices have been vacated by the decree of fate. Soon others will occupy their places. ... It is one of the inexplicable mysteries of life in which one surrenders his peace of mind, his tranquillity of soul and life under his own vine and fig tree for a disappointing, disillusioning ignis fatuus in the morass of public life."

The Democratic tribute to the dead, voiced by hard-boiled Rules Chairman John J. O'Connor, was no less moving. Recalling the words of Arnold, Pericles, Aristotle and Mark Twain, he declared: "It has not been given to all men to have lived in the days through which they, our deceased colleagues, passed. To have lived during the last generation is a privilege never before afforded in history, and unlikely to be repeated. . . ."

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