it lacks a 19th-century modification to add extra storage space to the top. When Daniel Webster acquired this seat, he pronounced that if his predecessor could organize himself to work with the reduced desk space, so could he. Every subsequent senator who has sat at that desk has also declined to have it improved. In keeping with a 1974 Senate resolution, this desk is assigned to the senior Senator from Webster's birth state, New Hampshire. Jeanne Shaheen has been the occupant of this desk since 2011. Etching In the early twentieth century, a tradition of senators engraving their own name on the bottom of the desk drawers emerged. Candy desk In 1965, California senator George Murphy began a tradition of keeping a desk near the back of the chamber stocked with candy. This continues today. Senate gavel The Senate uses three gavels, each of them have an hourglass shape with no handle. The first gavel, which had been used since at least 1789, cracked during the 1954 Senate session when then Vice President Richard Nixon (acting as President of the Senate) used it during a heated debate. Prior to this, an attempt to further prevent damage to the old gavel was done by adding silver plates to both ends. A replacement gavel made of ivory was presented to the Senate by the Republic of India and first used on November 17, 1954. In response to widespread awareness of elephant poaching and illegal ivory trades, a white marble gavel has been in use since at least 2021. All three gavels are kept in a mahogany box that is carried to the senate floor by a page; at the adjournment of a senate session the gavels are taken to the Sergeant at Arms' office for safekeeping. Bean soup According to custom, bean soup is available on the Senate dining room menu every day. This tradition, which dates back to the early twentieth century, is variously attributed to a request by Senator Fred Dubois of Idaho, or, in another version of the story, to Senator Knute Nelson of Minnesota. The Dubois includes mashed potatoes and yields five gallons of soup. There are two Senate soup recipes: Seersucker Thursday Seersucker Thursday is an annual tradition in which Senators wear clothing made of seersucker on National Seersucker Day. This light, cotton-based material is traditional in the Southern United States. The tradition was started by Republican