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LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS
HOUSE - FOURTH DAY
Carson, January 15.
The Committee on Rules for the Government of the House, reported yesterday the good old-fashioned and entirely proper rule that members and officers should keep their seats at adjournment until the Speaker had declared the House adjourned and left the Chair. Well, sir, the House debated it and voted it down. I can prove it by the Clerk's Journal. Now, considering that it was a harmless measure, and a customary one, and a mark of respect to the Chair; and considering that it is very seldom enforced, and also, that it was a little disrespectful to the Chair to vote it down, the action of the House in the matter seems somewhat strained. But I will interrupt you just here, if you please, and suggest to you that it is none of your business, and I want to know what you are putting in your lip about it for? I expect we can attend to our own affairs. And didn't they bullyrag that concurrent resolution yesterday? I reckon not. I do not admire the taste of the lobby members, though, in letting on as if they knew so much more about it, when the House is being rent with the mortal agonies of an effort to adjourn itself over for a week without adjourning the Council at the same time. The House did not wish to adjourn the Council without being asked to do so by that body, and if the House found it very nearly impossible to word the resolution so as not to adjourn the Council aforesaid, I do not conceive that it was dignified on the part of the lobby members to express by their countenances that they had their own opinions concerning the House. But didn't the House worry that concurrent resolution for a few hours or so? You bet you. However, we had better let "parliamentary usage" alone for the present, until our former knowledge on the knotty subject returns to our memories. Because Providence is not going to put up with this sort of thing much longer, you know. I observe there is no lightning rod on these county buildings. - MARK TWAIN
[reprinted in Mark Twain of the Enterprise, edited by Henry Nash Smith, (Univ. of California Press, 1957), pp. 140-41.]
