death, Senator Vest of Missouri declared that if every one for whom Voorhees did a good deed "would but bring a single leaf to his grave and lay it there, the Indiana Senator would sleep tonight beneath a mountain of foliage." That same generosity meant that Voorhees rarely met a pension bill that he could oppose. The Treasury, as far as he was concerned, was open to whoever needed help. As Vest once told him, Voorhees "would have put Aladdin's Lamp in the hands of a receiver within thirty days." Senator Voorhees served in the U.S. Senate from 1877 to 1897. He was a member of the powerful Finance Committee throughout his service in the Senate, and his first speech in that body was a defence of the free coinage of silver and a plea for the preservation of the full legal tender value of greenback currency. He had an active part in bringing about the building of the new Congressional Library. On tariff matters, he voted dutifully with his party, but he was no enthusiast for free trade, and his frankness could be embarrassing, at least from a Democrat. "Why, the cow and the goose are the greatest fools in the world," he blurted out once, "except the man who thinks that a tariff can be laid without protection." Voorhees made a fascinating speaker, if somewhat careless in his use of facts. "The readers of the News are aware that it has been repeatedly forced, by the variety and brilliance of his misinformation, to compliment Senator Voorhees on the unfailing inaccuracy of his historical statements, whether political, social, or literary," an Indianapolis newspaper remarked. He was widely known as an effective advocate, especially in jury trials. In allusion to his unusual stature he was called "the Tall Sycamore of the Wabash." In 1893, Voorhees came in for serious controversy when President Grover Cleveland called Congress into extra session to repeal the silver purchase clause of the 1890 Sherman Act. As chair of the Senate Finance Committee, the senior senator from Indiana could prevent action, and three years before, he had stood among the leading supporters for an unlimited coinage of silver. His views, in fact, had not changed. He remained, to the end of his days, a believer in bimetallism: the use of both silver and gold to back up the United States currency. But Indiana was less friendly