las debates he was the verbatim reporter, receiving the highest praise from Mr. Lincoln for the accuracy of his work.
During the sessions of 1858, 1859, and 1860, Mr. Hitt was the official stenographer of the Illinois legislature, having the contract for both the senate and the house. In 1867 and 1868 he made a tour of Europe and Asia, daily taking down in shorthand notes his impressions of the peoples and conditions of the countries and places visited. Upon his return he was again employed by the government in confidential cases, including missions to Santo Domingo and to the southern states to investigate the Ku Klux Klan, after which he became private secretary to Senator O. P. Morton, and in December of the same year was appointed secretary of legation at Paris, by President Grant, which position he held for six years.
In 1880, upon the request of Mr. Blaine, then secretary of state, President Garfield appointed him assistant secretary, which position he resigned to become a candidate for Congress, to which he was elected in 1882. He served continuously from the Forty-eighth to the Fifty-eighth Congress. While serving his twelfth term, Mr. Hitt died on September 20, 1906 at Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island.
[Phonographic Magazine, VII, 205; June 1, 1893]
AN INTERVIEW WITH HON. R. R. HITT
When I was a lad of nearly fifteen, I saw some little pamphlets which were handed me by a man named Pickard, in 1850, in advocacy of phonetic reform, and it was through the advertisements in them that I procured the phonographic manuals. From these works I obtained enough knowledge of the principles and rules of shorthand to begin to use it.
The first fruitful use of it was in taking notes of lectures at college. After graduating at Mt. Morris College I went to New Orleans, constantly practicing the art and gaining speed. In the spring of 1857 I returned to Illinois, then removed to Chicago and began to report}}
