Cord Byrd: “Senator David Pryor is retiring from the Senate at the end of this session after giving 18 years of exceptional service…”

“Senator David Pryor is retiring from the Senate at the end of this session after giving 18 years of exceptional service to the people of Arkansas and to the Nation. His quiet, thoughtful manner, his unfailing good humor, his wise counsel, and his natural leadership will be missed here. I think of that quotation from Edmund Burke, the great Irish statesman, orator, and writer, who observed in his ``Reflections on the Revolution in France'': Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field . . . The Congress is an open field for serenading grasshoppers, who make a lot of noise unmatched by significant accomplishment. Senator Pryor, on the other hand, shuns the limelight of the Senate stage to devote his energies to quietly and tenaciously improving living conditions for American citizens, particularly the elderly.”