Ten Days

When a dog's nose isn't cold, when a child doesn't like jam, one knows that something has gone wrong in the constituted arrangements of nature. Now and then, however, one observes a dog or a child without detecting anything peculiar in his behavior, yet one feels sure that, if he is not ill, there is at least something strange the matter with him.

So it was with the Senate. For the first ten days of its session, observers watched it and wondered. What was the matter? What was lacking? What made it seem so strange? Then a close observer discovered the cause. For ten days on end Senator Heflin had been silent. Not a speech had he made. In the last session, it was a rare day, barring Sundays, when the Alabaman did not make at least a 20-minute oration, or perhaps two such or maybe one of an hour and a half's duration. His subject -- whatever bill was on the floor -- was almost invariably Republican corruption. Sometimes his col leagues left the floor, sometimes the press gallery was vacant, and some times, too, the other galleries emptied; but he always had for his audience the presiding officer and the clerks who scribbled the minutes. On them he turned the scorching eloquence of his denunciation of Republican weakness, wickedness and sin, preaching in the desert, of the Sodom which was Teapot Dome, and the Gomorrah which was the Department of Justice.

Able correspondent Frank R. Kent penned of him:

"A big man, tall, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, leather-lunged, he is one of the best rough-and-tumble stump speakers in the country and an unrivaled storyteller. Not a profound man, not a polished man, not a studious man, he is shrewd, vigorous, alert and likable, with his humbuggery and sincerity mixed in about equal proportions. He believes in at least half of the things he says, which is a pretty good proportion for a Senator."

Now for ten whole days he had contained himself. The press gallery be gan to chuckle. His colleagues made sly remarks. But they were premature.

On the eleventh day, the debate concerning Muscle Shoals continued with acrimony. An elephantine figure rose from the back row of desks on the Democratic side. The Chair recognized him. Standing like a colossus above his fellows, he first declared that he supported the bill of his colleague, Mr. Underwood. Then, with a gesture of his great arm, he opened the floodgates of his eloquence. All the dammed up speech of ten silent days burst forth, inundated the chamber. For two hours it flowed over the spillway of his golden tongue; when it ceased, his hearers shook their heads: "Ah, yes, there's nothing the matter with the Senate after all."