THE TOPPLING OF A MONUMENT The Honorable Heman Atkins sat in the library of his Washington home, before a snapping log fire, reading a letter.

Mr.Atkins had, as he would have expressed it, "served his people" in Congress for so many years that he had long since passed the hotel stage of living at the Capital.

He rented a furnished house on an eminently respectable street, and the polished doorplate bore his name in uncompromising characters.
The library furniture was solid and dignified.

Its businesslike appearance impressed the stray excursionist from the Atkins district, when he or she visited the great man in whose affairs we felt such a personal interest.

Particularly impressive and significant was a map of the district hanging over the congressman's desk, and an oil painting of the Atkins mansion at Bayport, which, with the iron dogs and urns conspicuous in its foreground, occupied the middle of the largest wall space.
The cheery fire was very comforting on a night like this, for the sleet was driving against the windowpanes, the sidewalks were ankle deep in slush, and the wet, cold wind from the Potomac was whistling down the street.