take part in shaping the laws and directing the policy of this great country, is to have gained something well worth winning. To hold a place in the United States Senate merely to have the pleasure of being called a Senator is nothing; to use worthily the great opportunity which it gives is everything, and any man may feel honored thus to devote his life to the public service. THE LIFE OF A CON GRESSMAN BY THOMAS B. REED FORMERLY SPEAKER OF THE N the Constitution of the United States the Senate and House of Representatives together are called "The Congress." Hence, in strictness, Senators and Representatives are alike Members of Congress; but in everyday language the name is given to Representatives only, and they alone write M.C. after their names. It is the life of the Representatives only which I shall try to sketch, and of that life I can hope to give but the merest outline. It is a fact of almost universal application that we see the bright side of every other man's occupation, and seldom the dark side. The dark side of our own lives we clearly know, and we are quite as apt to exaggerate its blackness as we are to magnify the good another enjoys. Probably a great many young people think that the life of a Member of Congress, with five thousand dollars a year, is a life of pleasure, comfort, and luxury, full of power and dignity. not, they have changed very the young people of my day. If they do much from Of course they have changed in other ways, and much for the better, but probably not in this estimate of things. Of course the young people are right in a measure. It is an honorable duty to perform that of representing a hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand people in their relations with the seventy millions of other people of a great nation, the prosperity of which may be affected by |