versed in parliamentary law, and at all points fully equipped for the conflict. With the exception of Henry Clay, the House of Representatives has probably never known his equal as a party leader. That he possessed a touch of humor will appear from the following. While the discussion was at its height upon his amendment excluding Jefferson Davis from the benefit of the General Amnesty Bill, Mr. Blaine, looking across to the opposite side of the Chamber, said: "I confess to a feeling of commiseration for some gentlemen upon the other side, who represent close districts. Surrounded by their Southern associates here, and with intense Union consituencies at home, their apprehension, as they are called to vote upon this amendment, is indeed deplorable. It reminds me of a Hibernian procession I once saw moving down Broadway, where the serious question was how to keep step to the music, and at the same time to dodge the omnibuses!"

My seat was just across the aisle from that of Mr. Blaine. When introduced, I handed him letters of introduction from two of his college classmates, the Hon. Robert E. Williams and the Rev. John Y. Calhoun. After reading the letters and speaking most kindly of his old Washington College classmates, he brusquely inquired, "What are John Y. Calhoun's politics?"

I answered, "He is a Democrat."

Blaine instantly replied, "Well, how strangely things do come around in this world! When we were in college together, Calhoun was the strongest kind of a Presbyterian."

I intimated that his sometime classmate was still of that eminently respectable persuasion. The reply was, in manner indicating apparent surprise, "Is it possible that out in your country a man can be a Presbyterian and a Democrat at the same time?"

I was a member of the Board of Visitors to West Point in June, 1877. Mr. Blaine and Bishop Quintard of Tennessee were also members. General Hancock was with our Board for some days at the little West Point Inn, and delivered the address to the graduating class of cadets. He was then in

excellent health, and as superb in appearance as he had been courageous in battle. I have never heard more brilliant conversation than that at our table, in which the chief participants were Gail Hamilton, Bishop Quintard, General Hancock, Senator Maxey, and Mr. Blaine. The last named, "upon the plain highway of talk," was unrivalled.

While the Board was in session, Mr. Blaine and I spent some hours with the Hon. Hamilton Fish, late Secretary of State, at his country home near West Point. Near by was still standing the historic Beverly Robinson House, the home of Benedict Arnold when he was in command of the Colonial forces at West Point. As we passed through the quaint old mansion, Mr. Blaine, whose knowledge of our Revolutionary history was all-embracing, described graphically the conditions existing at the time of Arnold's treason, and just where each person sat at the breakfast table in the old dining-room in which we were then standing, on the fateful morning when the courier from the British camp hurriedly announced to General Arnold the capture of Major André.

Mr. Blaine and I were once passing along Pennsylvania Avenue, a third of a century ago, when he remarked that the old building just to our right had once been a high-toned gambling house; that there were traditions to the effect that even some well-known statesmen were not wholly unadvised as to its exact location and uses. He then told me that during his first term in Congress he was early one morning passing this building on his way to the Capitol. Just as he reached the spot where we were then standing, the Hon. Thaddeus Stevens came down the steps of the building mentioned, and, immediately after his cordial greeting to Mr. Blaine, was accosted by a negro preacher, who earnestly requested a contribution toward the building of a church for his people. Promptly taking a roll from his vest pocket, Mr. Stevens handed the negro a fifty-dollar bill, and turning to Blaine, solemnly observed,

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform!"

At the time first mentioned, Mr. Blaine was in excellent health, buoyant in spirits, aggressive to the last degree, and full of hope as to the future. The disappointments and bereavements that saddened the closing years of his life had as yet cast no shadow upon his pathway.

Next in leadership to Mr. Blaine, upon the Republican side, was the Hon. James A. Garfield. He possessed few of the qualities of brilliant leadership so eminently characteristic of Blaine, but was withal one of the ablest men I have ever known. Gifted with rare powers of oratory, with an apparently inexhaustible reservoir of information at his command, he knew no superior in debate. At one period of his life he was the recipient of public honors without a parallel in our history. While yet a Representative in Congress, he was a Senator-elect from Ohio, and the Presidentelect of the United States. For once, it indeed seemed that "fortune had come with both hands full." In the words of the Persian poet, "he had obtained an ear of corn from every harvest." And yet, And yet, a few months later, in the words of his great eulogist, "The stately mansion of power had become to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he begged to be taken from its prison walls, from its oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness."

My personal acquaintance with Mr. Garfield began early in January, 1876, when we were members of the House Committee appointed by the Speaker to convey the remains of a deceased member to his late home, Norwich, Connecticut, for burial. Another member of the Committee was Representative Wheeler of New York. It was late Saturday afternoon when we were conveyed by carriages from the crossing at Jersey City to the depot where the Norwich train was in waiting. Our route lay for some distance along Broadway, through the very heart of the great metropolis. As we passed the hurrying throngs that crowded the great thoroughfare that sombre winter evening, Mr. Garfield remarked that it was a scene similar to the one we were then witnessing that suggested to Mr. Bryant one of the most stirring of his shorter poems.

At our request and in tones that linger even yet in my memory, he then repeated these lines:

"Let me move slowly through the street
Filled with an ever shifting train,
Amid the sound of steps that beat

The murmuring walks like autumn rain.

How fast the flitting figures come,

The mild, the fierce, the stony face;

Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some
Where secret tears have left their trace!

They pass to toil, to strife, to rest,
To halls in which the feast is spread,
To chambers where the funeral guest
In silence sits beside the dead.

Each where his tasks or pleasures call
They pass, and heed each other not.
There is Who heeds, Who holds them all
In His large love, and boundless thought.
These struggling tides of life that seem
In wayward, aimless course to tend,
Are eddies of the mighty stream

That rolls to its appointed end."

Norwich, the home of the deceased member, Mr. Starkweather, and where he was laid to rest, is a beautiful city and one of much historic interest. It was here that Benedict Arnold was born, and the ruins of his early home were still to be seen. Of greater interest was a monument standing in an old Indian burying-ground near the centre of the city, "Erected to the Memory of Uncas." It was within the memory of the oldest inhabitant that the President of the United States and his Cabinet were in attendance at the dedication of this monument, and deeply interested in the impressive ceremonies in honor of "the last of the Mohicans."

An exceedingly courteous gentleman upon the same side of the chamber was the Hon. Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachusetts. He had been a Major-general during the late war, and was an ex-Governor of his State. He first achieved national distinction in the thirty-fourth Congress, when,