Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1902 — AN EMBLEM OF AUTHORITY. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

AN EMBLEM OF AUTHORITY.

Awesome Mace Which Preserves Order in House of Representatives. “The Goose” has not been “brought out’’ since the Fifty-fifth Congress, says • Washington correspondent. The “Bird,”

as it is also called, is the Mace, in official language, and is by all odds the most a w e s o m e thing around the House of Representatives. It is a silver eagle surmounting a globe and the traditional thirteen arrows which are bound together by silver bands. Altogether the Mace is about four feet in length and weighs some twenty pounds.

When the House is in session the “goofee” is planted on top of a marble pedestal at the right of the Speaker’s desk. As soon as the House adjourns or is “resolved into committee of the whole," the Mace comes down from the pedestal. The most terrifying office of the goose, however, Is that of preserving order. After the Speaker has exhausted his good right arm in rapping with his ivory gavel for silence, after he has yelled his larynx raw, calling for “order!" he orders the sergeant-at-arms to bring forth the aweinspiring emblem of authority. The sergeant, generally pretty badly scared himself, grabs the goose by the throat and bears down upon the offending member. By the time he reaches the obstreperous Congressman’s seat, that rip-roaring statesman, who but a moment before was filling the atmosphere with brimstone, slides into his chair and becomes meeker than a lamb. Exactly what would happen to the member who defied the goose Is not definitely known. It is the general belief that he would be blasted by Jones' lightwings. Jerry Simpson, the sackless of Kansas, who was the last to invoke the Mace, came nearer destruction than any other member in history. “Take that buzzard away!” he cried as the sergeant-at-arms advanced with the “goose” before him. But Jerry wilted before the sergeant reached him. "By the authority vested in me by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, you are now under arrest!” Is what the sergeant-at-arms would say if the offending member continued in his defiance. Then, it is said, the disturber could be summarily “fired” from the House.

THE “GOOSE.”