In ante bellum days it was usual to erect monuments of uniform size and pattern in memory of such Senators and Representatives in Congress as died during the sessions of Congress. The excitement and derangement of affairs consequent upon the war and events following it caused a suspension in this work, and none of these national memorials have been erected since 1860. At the recent session provision was made for a resumption of this work, under the direction of the Clerk of the House. The bids for erecting the monuments will be opened tomorrow.

Bids were opened yesterday in the office of the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House of Representatives for supplying twenty-one monuments in the Congressional Cemetery to deceased Senators and members. The contract was awarded to Alexander Rutherford for the sum of $2,100, the obelisks to be similar to those already erected in the cemetery.

… Also, a communication from the same party (S.L. Loomis) in reference to cemeteries, in which he states that the water off the Congressional burial ground passes directly into the Potomac, … Both communications were referred to the sanitary committee.

In the Senate on Friday last, Mr. Morrill, of Vermont, from the Committee on Public Buildings and Roads, reported a bill, which was read and passed to a second reading, providing that hereafter, whenever any deceased Senator or member of the House of Representatives shall be actually interred in the Congressional cemetery, so-called, it shall be the duty of the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate, in the case of a Senator, and of the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House of Representatives, in the case of a member of the House, to have the usual monument erected, with suitable inscriptions, and that the cost of the same shall be a charge upon and paid of either from the contingent funds of the Senate of the House of Representatives, to whichever the deceased may have belonged and any existing omissions of monuments or inscriptions are authorized to be supplied in like manner.

Yesterday Col. W.P. Adair and D.H. Ross, of the Cherokees; Geo. W. Stidham, of the Creeks, and P.P. Pitchlynn, of the Choctaws, visited the Congressional Cemetery and decorated the graves of their departed friends, among them Push-ma-ta-ha of the Choctaws; Capt. John Rogers, chief of the "Old Settler" Cherokees; John Looney, Cherokee chief and delegate; Wm. S. Coody, Buford West, Ezekiel Starr, Capt. Thomas Pegg, Capt. James McDaniel and Judge Richard Fields, Cherokee delegates, and Daniel B.Asberry, Creek delegate.