'I'm right proud of your company, Uncle,' she protested. 'Only everybody'll be thinkin' as I've got a new beau, you look so different in them lovely clo'es.'

Todie did look different, it could not be denied, in the trousers that were so tight as greatly to discommode him in sitting down, and in the topcoat which, though it would not quite button in front, was yet so long in the sleeves that his poor red hands were quite hidden.

Both of them were very happy as they set out for church that evening. For Todie this transformation in appearance, with all its discomforts, meant, more specifically than anything that had gone before, the putting off of the old man with his deeds. He held up his head with a self-respect not wholly due, by any means, to the pinching collar or the taut coat. The loud-creaking shoes under his feet did not shuffle indecisively. Every step, heavy and assured, announced dignity.

As for little Rosie, not only had she Todie's company at church to make her happy, but she had a wonderful new secret in her bosom which had turned every item of the day's drudgery into an act of thanksgiving. She confided it to him that night as they walked homeward together from the mission chapel. Todie's new shoes had begun to hurt him severely; but he gave no sign of it beyond walking a little more slowly, and with somewhat more dignity than at first.

'When I got home last night, Uncle Todie, I found some lovely, lovely news waiting for me. Now, what do you think it was?'

'Somebody croaked and left ye a million,' suggested her companion with a labored chuckle.

'No, something a lot better'n that. Somebody I ain't seen since I left home is comin' across next month. He's laid

up quite a good bit o' money, and – and - '

'And you be goin' to marry him,' supplied Todie, in a harsh, accusing voice.

'Yes, I be. Ain't it lovely?' she went on hurriedly, feigning not to remark her escort's lack of responsiveness. 'I thought mebbe it would be years an' years afore that could happen, and so I ain't said nothing about it. But now I want you to know, becaust - becaust you always been so nice to me, and I knew you'd be glad I was happy.'

Todie had quickly recovered a semblance of his usual manner, and he made a scrupulous effort to answer her as she ought to be answered.

'If ever your man wants to know what a prime little hangel he got for a wife, w'y, you just send 'im to your Uncle Todie. When be ye goin' to marry 'im?'

'I dare say about as soon as he gets here. I think he's that kind of a one, as you might say.'

'And be ye goin' to live 'ereabouts, some place?'

She felt his arm, upon which her little gloved hand rested, tighten its pressure, and in a flash her eyes were opened to new things.

'I reckon he's wantin' to fetch me back to the old country,' she answered, in a frightened voice.

For a couple of blocks they walked on in silence a silence broken only by the creaking of Todie's boots.

At last she ventured, very softly, 'I was wonderin' could I make so bold as to ask a very great favor of you.'

"There ain't nothink as I would n't do for you, Miss Rosie.'

'You see, Mr. Todie, as ma's cousin is away in Cuba, there ain't no one to give me away. I was wonderin' would you be willin' to do that, seein' what a good friend of ours you been all these months.'

She felt her hand trembling violently, as she peered earnestly into his averted face.

Todie did not answer at once. He coughed two or three times, in rather a forced way, and spat into the gutter. Then he cleared his throat.

'Hit's a great h'onor, Miss Rosie, I'm sure.'

The new clothes were not donned again until the wedding day. The groom contributed a pair of gray gloves to the handsome outfit, and Rosie pinned a large white carnation to the lapel of the black serge coat. The ceremony took place in the parish house; and when the curate demanded, 'Who giveth this woman away?' Todie took a step forward, and replied, in a loud, defiant, asthmatic voice, 'I do.'

In the dusky hallway, afterwards, she put her arms lightly upon his shoulders and kissed him.

'Good-by, Uncle Todie,' she whispered. 'Promise now you won't forget me.'

He only nodded his head in answer, while two great tears trickled down upon his cheeks.

And you know how ma and granny will be expectin' you to drop in often of an evening. Don't forget, now!'

A taxicab was in waiting at the steps of the parish house. Rosie's husband, a blond, broad-shouldered game-warden, handed her in, entered, and they were off for the boat. Mrs. Dale went home by a cross-town car; and Todie set out afoot in the direction of Mrs. Curring's.

He walked as if only half awake, stumbling against the curbing in his great creaking boots. Arrived finally at his destination, he retired to the sub-basement and changed his clothes. When he quitted the house, a full hour before the end of the afternoon, he had a bundle under his arm.

Three days passed, and nothing was seen of him. Mrs. Curring had not yet secured a domestic. She was in despair. The whole house was topsyturvy. The furnace and the kitchen stove were clogged with ashes. The hall-rug sent out a cloud of dust wherever you stepped on it.

'Was ever an honest woman in such a plight!' cried Mrs. Curring, ready to drop with fatigue, and thinking with horror of the great pile of unwashed dishes that waited in the kitchen.

And then the basement bell gave a feeble, apologetic, well-remembered ring. She flew to the door; and there in the area-way stood poor Todie, bleary-eyed, dejected, penitent.

'Oh, Todie!' was all she said.

She opened the gate; he shuffled into the kitchen, and went silently about his work.

The old order, which had changed for six months and two weeks, had been restored again. Domestics came and went at Mrs. Curring's-black Susie, English Bess, Irish Maggie and Todie continued to be faithful, as of yore, after his fashion. His feet clung to beaten tracks, never seeking the West Side. At half-past five every day he received two sandwiches and twenty cents from Mrs. Curring; and she earnestly prayed, and with reason, that none of the lodgers would be generous to Todie.

So a year and something more passed, and one day a letter arrived bearing an English stamp, and addressed to Mr. Todie Love. He tore it open with trembling fingers, gazed at the neat, copybook chirography with vain longing, and handed it, with a sigh, to Mrs. Curring.

'I reckon it's too long words for the likes of me,' he remarked. 'Be it from little Rosie?'

'Yes, that it is, and none other,' declared Mrs. Curring, as she opened the

folded sheet. 'And see, Todie, here's a little home-made photo. Well, as I'm alive, if it ain't little Rosie herself and a baby!'

He snatched the picture from her, and pored over it with blind eyes, while Mrs. Curring read aloud the prim little missive, the sender of which, it appeared, had taken her pen in hand to say that she was enjoying excellent health; also that her husband was well; and that she hoped her old Uncle Todie was in good health, and would he remember her, please, very respect

fully, to Mrs. Curring. There was little else in the letter, saving only the important announcement of the arrival, eight weeks since, of the first baby, 'which at present writing weighs 1212

lbs.'

But when Mrs. Curring went out into the furnace-room an hour later to see whatever had become of poor Todie, she found him on the bench against the wall, with the letter in one hand, and the photograph in the other, still face to face, blindly, with the riddle of human things.

Wednesday, December 12, 1866. Negro suffrage in the District is the radical hobby of the moment and is the great object of some of the leaders throughout the union. At the last session the Senate did not act upon the bill for fear of the popular verdict at the fall elections. Having dodged the issue then, they now come here under Sumner's lead and say that the people have declared for it.

There is not a senator who votes for this bill who does not know that it is an abuse and wrong. Most of the Negroes of this District are wholly unfit to be electors. With some exceptions they are ignorant, vicious and degraded, without patriotic or intelligent ideas or moral instincts. There are among them worthy, intelligent, industrious

men, capable of voting understandingly and who would not discredit the trust, but they are exceptional cases. As a community they are too debased and ignorant. Yet fanatics and demagogues will crowd a bill through Congress to give them suffrage, and probably by a vote which the veto could not overcome. Nevertheless, I am confident the President will do his duty in that regard. It is pitiable to see how little sense of right, real independence, and what limited comprehension are possessed by our legislators. They are the tame victims and participators of villainous conspirators.

Monday, December 24, 1866. Most of the members of Congress have gone home or abroad on excur

sions free of expense, a popular way of travelling recently introduced by free passes and passages. It is a weak and factious Congress, the most so of any I have ever known. There is less statesmanship, less principle, less honest legislation than usual. There is fanaticism, demagogism, recklessness. The radicals, who constitute more than three fourths, are managed and controlled by leaders who have no more regard for the constitution than for an old almanac, and the remaining fourth are mostly party men, not patriots. There are but few who have a right comprehension of the organic law and our governmental system. There are a few good, conscientious men, but no great and marked mind looms up in either house. It seems to be taken for granted that Congress is omnipotent and without limitation of power. A proposition, introduced by Thad Stevens, for reducing the old State of North Carolina to a territory, was quietly received as proper and matter-ofcourse legislation. By what authority or by what process this is to be brought about is not stated nor asked. To break down the states, to take all power from the executive, to cripple the judiciary and reconstruct the Supreme Court, are among the principal objects of the radical leaders at this time. Four fifths of the members are small party men, creatures of corner groceries, without any knowledge of the science of government or of our constitutions. With them all, the great, overpowering purpose and aim are office and patronage. Most of their legislation relates to office, and their highest conception of legislative duty has in view place and how to get it.

The talk and labor of reconstruction is the engine by which they hold power, yet not a man among that great number of elected radicals appears to know or be able to define what he means by

reconstruction. The states were for a time, while the rebellion was going on, antagonistic. Those in rebellion were out of their proper relation to the government. But the rebellion has been suppressed. War has ceased, and those of our countrymen who were in arms are, and have been for eighteen months, pursuing their peaceful avocations. Each state has its executive, its legislative, and its judicial departments, and the whole machinery of government is in full operation; the state and municipal laws are in force; everything in each of the states is as perfect and complete as it was ten years ago before the rebellion, saving and excepting their right to representation in Congress, which is denied them by the radicals who want to reconstruct and govern them. There is nothing to reconstruct. If Congress will forbear longer to obstruct, the country will move on quietly and prosperously.

Thursday, December 27, 1866.

A number of the members of Congress, all I believe radicals, have gone South. They have free tickets from the War Department, and travel without expense to themselves. If some saucy fellow, with one fifth of the malignity and hate of these members, should insult or show impudence to the visitors, it would be a god-send [to them] and furnish them with reasons abundant to outlaw the whole Southern people.

Friday, January 4, 1867.

At the Cabinet to-day the President read his veto message on the bill reorganizing the District of Columbia which excluded those who had given comfort to the rebels but allowing Negroes to vote. I was not aware until to-day that the bill had been sent him. When I last conversed with him, about a week since, he said he had not received it.

Seward gave it his approval and made quite a random general speech without much point. Said he had always advocated Negro suffrage and voted for it in New York. Here and in the states where there was a large preponderating Negro population it was different, if they were not in a majority they were a large minority. That eventually universal suffrage was to prevail, he had no doubt. All governments were coming to it. There are today representatives in service in Egypt elected, etc., but he approved the message.

McCulloch approved the message because he was opposed to giving this privilege to the Negro. That was the sentiment of his state, as well as of himself, and he had always voted in conformity to it.

Stanbery occupied much the same position. Had as a member of the Ohio legislature voted against Negro suffrage. Should do the same to-day if there, and behind that on the naked question there were at least one hundred thousand majority against it in that state.

Stanton took from his portfolio a brief and carefully prepared written statement, to the effect that he had examined the bill and could perceive no constitutional objections to any of its provisions; he therefore hoped the President would give it his approval.

I read from some rough notes that

the bill proposed to do something more for the blacks than to raise them to an equality with the whites,-it proposed to elevate them above a certain class of whites of admitted intelligence and character who, heretofore, were entitled to and had exercised suffrage.

If suffrage is claimed for the blacks on the ground that they are rightfully entitled to it as citizens of the United States, then to deprive the white citizens of that right which they now enjoy is to inflict a punishment upon them and subject them to a forfeiture, and it is proposed to do this without due form of law, that is, without trial and conviction, they, by an ex-postfacto law, are to be condemned. The constitution would thus be violated in two of its most important provisions, deemed essential to the preservation of liberty, and the act, if sanctioned, will stand as a precedent for any similar violation hereafter, etc.

On the other points I agreed with the gentlemen that Congress ought to pass no such law until the states had at least gone as far, that the people of the District (the white people) ought. to be heard. I expected that Stanton would have met me defiantly, but he said not a word.

Browning was opposed to the bill for the reasons stated in the veto, and so was Randall.

After all had expressed themselves, Attorney-General Stanbery enquired how long the veto could be delayed. The President said until Monday. Stanbery remarked that would not be sufficient for his purpose. He had reason to believe that the Supreme Court would give its opinion on the test-oath question on Monday, which he thought would embrace the point which I had raised. He had not turned his mind to the constitutional question, but believed the objection well taken.

Stanton still said nothing; I thought,