AUG. 17.
Miss Dix's bill is now up. We are calling the yeas and nays upon it. It will pass, I think, without doubt; but I shall let you know before I seal this.
Miss Dix finds new work all the time. This District has about forty lunatics, which it supports at the Institution of Maryland, near Baltimore. These are all to be turned out in a few days; and she is trying to get a bill passed for a hospital in this District.
The bill for a hospital has passed the House!
I thought I was to have the floor just now, and my heart went pit-a-pat; for I have never yet been able to speak anywhere without trepidation. But the chairman gave it to another man. At ten minutes to three, I shall try again.
Miss Dix's bill passed by yeas 98, nays 54. It always took two-thirds to get it up: so a majority did not help us.
Miss Dix is alarmed about her land-bill in the Senate; but I think it will go through there. She wishes to get through here, so that she can go to Nova Scotia, where they have made an appropriation for a hospital.
I had rather a boisterous time for half an hour with my speech. It blew hard; but I weathered the storm.
Don't be alarmed when you see what Polk said about my not holding myself responsible; that is, according to the laws of the duello. He is a poor drunken fellow from Tennessee, for whom no one has any respect, though he is brother of the former President. They tried to choke me down: but they might as well have tried to roar down old Boreas; for, when I "gets up" a little, I am quite as hard to be subdued as the more noisy ones.
I hope to have it all printed, and perhaps in your hands, this week.
You will see what an attack Polk made on Parson Fowler yesterday, — not violent and furious, but annoying. He said to the parson coseyly, while speaking, "You know we two are Christians." Polk is drunk every day. But it is now said that it will be honorably arranged, and there will be no "coffee and pistols" between them.
SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, pp. 380-1
