Washington Letter.

(Krom our Regular Correspondent.) Washington.. D. C, March. 4, 135. President Cleveland certainly had cause to be glad when the fall of the gavels of Vice-President Stevenson and Speaker Crisp announced the legal end of the Fifty-third congress. It is not believed that any other president has ever had as hard a physical task imposed upon him as has been perforraed by President Cleveland in the last 48 hours or almost continual work of the most wearing sort. Up to Saturday only two of the thirteen regular appropriation bilis had become laws - an unprecedented state of affairs - and eight of them were still in confer ence. Since then they have all been acted upon. To get an idea of the enormous amount of work the president had to perform it must be remembered that the more important of these appropriation bilis consist of hundreds of pages of itemized appropriations, and that President Cleveland never signs his name to anything without knowing just what it is, although he had in this case to sign bilis containing items and amendments that were decidedly objectionable, because the bilis containing them could not be vetoed without making an imraediate extra session necessary, something that he had no desire to do, if it could possibly be avoided. Later on there may have to be an extra session ot -jngress called, but there is at present a good prospect of escaping it entirely, unless there shall be another run on the treasury for gold. It is fashionable to abuse congress, but when one takes the trouble to go carefully over the work of the fifty-third congress, it will be seen that there is little cause for abuse from anybody and none for abuse from democrats. True, this congress did not meet the expectations of the president as to financial legislation, but why was it ? The democratie party has always taught that the first duty of a a senator or representative was to represent his constituents. Well, that is precisely what the democrats in the senate and house of the fifty-third congress did, and that is why there was no financial legislation. President Cleveland realized this, and he has had no word of abuse for congressmen who stood by the views of their constituents, although he has not hesitated to express the opinión that those views were wrong and that time would convince those who held them of the fact. It s not often that members of the opposition party pay as high a tribute to the ability and patriotism of a member of the cabinet as Senators Aldrich, of R. I., and Lodge, of Mass., did to Secretary Herbert in their speeches in the senate against a reduction of Secretary Herbert's estirnates for the naval appropriation. Secretary Herbert has every right to feel proud of such complitnents, deserved as they were. One of the surprises of the last week of congress was that Senator Chandler ("Little Billy"), of N. H., should have dared with his record, financial and political, to have attacked the honesty of other senators. It may have been unparliamentary for Senator Hill, who gave "Little Billy" a terrible tongue thrashing, to refer to him as a "hyena," but its aptness excused its use in that particular case. Senator Martin, after saying that he had heard it said that if Chandler had his deserts he would be in the penitentiary instead of the senate, referred to Chandler as a "buzzard," who sat in the nest of an eagle and "vomited forth its filth on every occasion." While a dispute was going on as to whether Senator Martin's words should be taken down, he said that he would withdraw the objectionable words from respect to the senate, but his withdrawal of them would not change his belief in their truth. President Cleveland and Secretary Carlisle, who have been for quite a while two of the hardest worked officials of the government, will this week start on a hunting and fishing trip along the Carolina coast. They have certainly earned a vacation, and everybody hopes they will enjoy it and return with renewed strength to their arduous duties. Among those who extended congratulations to Postmaster General Wilson, who succeeds Mr. Bissell, was General John E. Mulford, of New York, now visiting his old-tirae colleague in the arrangements for the exchange of Union and Confedérate prisoners, Representative Hatch, of Missouri. It was the first time that Mr. Wilson had met Gen. Mulford since the war. Grasping him warmly by the hand the new postmaster general said: "General, I am overjoyed to meet you again. You had me in charge as a prisoner of war. I have never forgotten from that hour to this your soldierly bearing, your genuine courtesy, and the kindly interest you took in every prisoner on your boat on that occasion. I greet you with the greatest kindness and respect." "The Greatest Man of his Age," will be the subject of Dr. Cobern's morning sermón at the M. E. church next Sunday. In the evening he will lecture on "If I had my Life to Live Over." For several weeks Dr. Cobern has been sending out circulars to different people asking what changes they would make in their choice of companions, education, reading, personal habits and amusements if they had their life to live over. In this lecture he will give the answers he has received together with his own ideas upon them.