Wheeling Register

The Hot Springs Omission.

WASHINGTON, December 7.--The Senate committee inquiring into the omission of the Hot Springs clause from the sundry civil appropriation bill met to-day. Geo. I. Johnson, clerk in the postoffice department, testified that he met Senator Conover in August last and had a conversation with him in reference to an attack made on their characters by Benson, of the Treasury secret service. Prior to this interview he had never conversed with the Senator in relation to the Hot Springs matter. Benson and another employee of the secret service of the Treasury had called at the postoffice department and desired him to tell them all he knew about the Hot Springs matter. One asked him whether he had been to New York in January in the interest of certain parties in Washington. He told him that he had not; also that he (Johnson) was not at the capitol on the last night of the session. The larger man said that they had the affidavits of three persons that he had been seen waiting around the hall of the Senate, and had been seen to take a paper from Mr. Rice, Mr. Conover's clerk, who told him to get away with it. The witness replied that it was a pack of d--d lies, and suggested there was some mistake. The large man said there could be no mistake. Witness went to acting Postmaster General Tyner and told him that an outrageous attack had been made on witness and Senator Conover, and asked leave of absence for a few days to investigate the motive of the attack; did not ask who made affidavit, for he did not believe any had been made. Had a conversation with W.P. Rice in relation to the matter. Rice characterized the whole story as an outrageous issue of tall tales calculated and intended to injure Senator Conover. Had no knowledge of destruction of papers and had never said he had.