the thief who merely stole his bonds, even though they represented the accumulated savings of a lifetime of hard work and economy, while the thieves of his reputation were not only beyond the reach of the public or private prosecutor, but were able to pose in the eye of mankind as the peculiar if not exclusive exemplars of civic virtue? It is needless to say that, distracted as he was, he would have prosecuted the thief if that individual had not escaped detection.

Near the end of February he wrote as follows to Mr. Alfred B. Miller, of the South Bend Tribune :

"Accept my hearty thanks for the noble and true manner in which you have stood by me through this terrible trial, which would have killed me if I had not been innocent. If I had been a murderer, I think these hostile correspondents here could not have pursued me more malignantly. You don't know how it disgusts me with public life, its malicious plots, its wicked injustice, and its downright falsifications. Your letter, and Dr. Humphreys', and others received to-night gladdened me more than you can imagine. It gratifies me, too, to hear Senators talk about it. Some few, I have heard, think I may have forgotten-that is impossible, but it is the worst I have heard from any Senator—but a very large majority have expressed to me, personally, their unabated confidence. I have an invitation to a public dinner at Philadelphia from leading men.1 But is it not better for me to go home first, where I expect to live and die, and from whence I have had a hundred welcome and cordial letters the past month? Telegraph me if you think so."

The House of Representatives adopted the following resolution :

"That the testimony taken by the committee of this House, of which Mr. Poland is chairman, be referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, with instructions to inquire whether anything in such testimony warrants articles of impeachment of any officer of the United States not a member of this House, or makes it proper that further investigation should be ordered in his case.'

1. Mr. W. J. P. White, President of the Merchants' Exchange, conveyed this invitation in the following letter:

"Notwithstanding the assaults of your enemies and the misrepresentations of the envious, thousands of men and women in this city desire to manifest their continued confidence in your patriotism, honor, and veracity; and I am requested to inquire of you whether your arrangements after the adjournment of Congress will permit you to accept of a public or private dinner in this city, the day to suit your convenience. We should prefer to have ladies participate, and the dinner to be under proper restrictions. Please favor us with an early reply."

The Judiciary Committee reported, February 27th, that the power of impeachment was remedial and preventive only; that so far as receiving and holding an interest in the Credit Mobilier was concerned, there was nothing in the testimony submitted which would warrant the impeachment of the Vice-President. To him this was an additional misfortune, for in the trial of an impeachment a competent tribunal would have passed judgment on the testimony against him. He asked an investigation by the Senate, but this was impossible, for he was not a Senator. If the Poland Committee could have summed up his case, and rendered a verdict against him, as they did against Garfield, it might have raised a presumption in his favor. But the Poland Committee confined its findings to the cases of members of the House, and so the whole matter, so far as he was concerned, was left at loose ends.

Noon of the 4th of March having arrived, the Senate unanimously adopted a resolution of thanks to the Hon. Schuyler Colfax, for the able, dignified, and impartial manner in which he has discharged the laborious duties of the Chair during the term in which he has presided over the deliberations of the Senate." The Vice-President said:

"Senators, the time fixed for the dissolution of the Forty-second Congress has arrived; and with a few parting words I shall resign the gavel to the honored son of Massachusetts, who has been chosen by the people as my successor.

Administrations terminate and Congresses expire as the years pass by, but the nation lives and grows and prospers, to be served in the future by those equally faithful to its interests and equally proud of its growing influence among the nations of the earth. To be called by the Representatives of the people, and afterward by the people themselves, to the responsible duty of presiding successively over the two Houses of Congress for the past ten years, from the era of war through the era of reconstruction to the era of peace, more than fills the measure of an honorable ambition.

Looking back over these ten exciting years, I can claim not only that I have committed no act which has proven the confidence misplaced that called me to this position, but also that I have striven in its official duties to administer the parliamentary law with the same impartiality with which the upright judge upon the bench decides questions of life and

liberty. To faithfully protect the rights of the minority, as well as to uphold the rights of the majority in the advancement of the public business; to remain calm and unmoved amid the excitements of debate; to temper and restrain asperities, and to guard against personal antagonisms; to perform acceptably, in a word, the complex and often perplexing duties of the Chair without partisan bias, has been my constant endeavor. It is gratifying, therefore, that of the many hundreds of decisions made by me, often on the instant, none has been reversed and scarcely any seriously questioned.

"How much I owe to the uniform kindness and support of the members over whom I have presided is difficult to express in words. It has been bounded by no party lines and controlled by no political affiliations; and I rejoice that I have been able to attest my appreciation of this support. While zealously defending principles before the people, this defence has never been coupled with personal assault on any of the eminent public men with whom I have differed. No aspersions on their character have dishonored my tongue; no epithets or invective have fallen from my lips.

But the clock admonishes me that the Forty-second Congress has already passed into history; and wishing you, Senators, useful lives for your country and happy lives for yourselves, thanking you for the resolution spread on your journal, and invoking the favor of Him who holds the destinies of nations and of men in the hollow of His hand, I am ready to administer the oath of office to the Vice-President-elect, whom I now introduce to you."

The Washington correspondent of the Utica (N. Y.) Herald wrote:

"There was a world of pathos in Colfax's brief farewell. It was in the manner of his speaking that he filled the soul of every listener with infinite sympathy. The voice and manner of Mr. Colfax were an unconscious appeal to his hearers for a kindly judgment on the long public life to which he was adding the last finishing touches. But the words were the reverse a challenge, meant for the world, an invitation to scrutinize his whole record, and with just enough tint of bitterness about them to indicate that he believed himself to have been most foully misjudged in these last days."

Mrs. Mary Clemmer Ames, Washington correspondent of the New York Independent, wrote:

"He is the very Schuyler Colfax that he was when his name gave such magnetism to the ticket of 1868. The Vice-Presidency was the flood-tide of his favor. The popular Representative, the lionized Speaker, once ensconced in a place without patronage, irrevocably possessed by a wife, secure in his own castle, suddenly ceased to be in the public thought

the happy, hail-fellow-well-met, the fêted, followed, lauded lion of the hour. In that hour of supreme success, did he forget his fellows, the men and women who had pushed his triumphal car with steadfast, untiring, unselfish hands to its final goal? I know not. I only know that of the sin of ingratitude he is loudly accused, and remains to-day unforgiven. My own belief is that what seemed ingratitude to many was the result of new conditions, and not of deliberate will. No less, from that hour he has been pursued and punished by the press.

"We hear so much about the power of the press! Well, it is a fiendish power so far as it represents personal enmity and private spite. It is terrible to contemplate that a man's character may be filched away from him in type, because Jackanapes, who penned it, is enraged that he was not invited to his victim's house to dinner. He missed the dinner, but not the revenge; not he! Honest Job and Jemima read the paragraph in their isolated home. They ponder over it in sorrow. Their news

paper says it. Meanwhile Jackanapes crows to his cronies in ' Newspaper Row :'' He didn't invite me to dinner; but I can write him down. We'll bring the gentleman to his level. He'll feel the power of the press to his sorrow.'

"Yes, he felt it at the Philadelphia Convention. The newspaper men and his own sad lack of reticence made Schuyler Colfax's renomination impossible. But it should have been a malicious crime, one of which he is by nature incapable, to call out all the personal animosity exhibited there. • After his election to the Vice-Presidency he would not look at a newspaper man.' This is the standing and supreme accusation hurled against Schuyler Colfax for four years. It has deepened the color and pungency of every other. The root which nourishes to such malignant life the worst suspicions of to-day is personal animosity."

CHAPTER XIV.

CREDIT MOBILIER (CONTINUED).

1873.

RETURN TO SOUTH BEND. — GREAT OVATION. 'AFFECTIONATELY YOURS, U. S. Grant."—Verdict of the Leading Democratic JourNAL OF THE WEST.-LETTERS RECEIVED.-MUSTER OF HIS MOTLEY ASSAILANTS.-HIS DEFENCES THROWN DOWN BY HIS SOUTH BEND SPEECH OF 1872.-BUT WITHOUT INTENT.-HIS EXPLANATION.— GUILTY OF ALL, OR INNOCEnt of All.-SENSITIVENESS TO A STAIN ON HIS HONOR.-HIS Struggle THAT OF A HERO.-LETTER TO HIS WIFE AND SON, CARRIED NIne Years.-REWARD FOR TWENTY YEARS GIVEN TO THE SERVICE OF HIS COUNTRY.-PRESS Comments.

THE ex-Vice-President returned home by way of Chicago. The following account of his reception is taken from the South Bend Tribune Extra of March 11th, 1873:

"Except for a raw west wind, which at times blew almost a hurricane, the weather on Saturday last was all that could have been wished for the Colfax reception. The sun came up brightly in a clear sky, and threw its genial rays upon scores of flags and banners floating from buildings throughout the city; upon roads lined with teams; upon streets filled with people from the farm, workshop, and office, who began to gather at an early hour to join in the great ovation to our distinguished fellowcitizen. About eleven o'clock crowds of people began to move toward the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern depot; and before noon the passenger-house, the walks around it, and the yard space far out toward the streets was one solid mass of humanity, while South Street for a long distance either way was completely jammed with vehicles. Not even in the early days of the Rebellion, when companies and regiments embarked here for Southern battle-fields, had such crowds been seen. Yet for all the vast throng at the depot, the streets down in the city were more crowded than they usually are at any political rally; and in the Court House Square, where, on account of the high wind, it was determined to have the reception speeches, in the shelter of the Court House walls, there was gathered an assemblage that would have gladdened the heart of any political orator. Never before have we witnessed such an outpouring of the