"
It was even as he said. Everybody, more or less, was drunk--especially the
provisional speaker whom Mr. Randall had placed in the chair--and when we
arrived and I was led a prisoner down the center aisle pandemonium broke
loose.
They had all sorts of fun with me, such as it was. It was moved that I
be fined the full amount of my mileage. Then a resolution was offered
suspending my membership and sending me under guard to the old Capitol
prison. Finally two or three of my friends rescued me and business was
allowed to proceed. It was the last day of a very long session and those
who were not drunk were worn out.
When I returned home there was a celebration in honor of the bet Wake
Holman had won at my expense. Wake was the most attractive and lovable of
men, by nature a hero, by profession a "filibuster" and soldier of fortune.
At two and twenty he was a private in Col. Humphrey Marshall's Regiment
of Kentucky Riflemen, which reached the scene of hostilities upon the Rio
Grande in the midsummer of 1846. He had enlisted from Owen county--"Sweet
Owen," as it used to be called--and came of good stock, his father, Col.
Harry Holman, in the days of aboriginal fighting and journalism, a frontier
celebrity. Wake's company, out on a scout, was picked off by the Mexicans,
and the distinction between United States soldiers and Texan rebels not
being yet clearly established, a drumhead court-martial ordered "the
decimation."
This was a decree that one of every ten of the Yankee captives should be
shot.
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