It would perhaps be even more ludicrous to judge the Senate by the prayers it listens to than by the speeches delivered from its floor. As it is well known that the latter are often violent but hollow, so it has just been complained that the former, however devout, are puerile. Alonzo g. Anthony, a proofreader of Reading, Pennsylvania, writes in a letter to Senator Pepper, "The language used by Rev. J. J. Muir, Chaplain of the United States Senate, is like that of a third grade schoolboy".
Since it is Probable that few Senators "attend chapel", one could hardly, except one were a mid-Victorian Methodist, wax earnest over the matter. Yet the protests suggest an analogy to a retort that President Tyler once occasioned after the death of President Harrison had raised him to the office. He was about to purchase a used carriage when, seriously or no, he turned to his negro servant and asked, "Jim, do you think it's all right for a President to buy a second hand carriage?" The answer was, "Well boss, you'se a second hand President".
Beyong cavil, there are those who would conceive it highly unfitting to raise the standard of the Senate's prayers.
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