was the one thing which everybody supposed could not happen. Not even the Greeley men themselves thought it could happen. The only able politician who seemed to be really for Greeley, was Waldo Hutchins, of New York, and even his sincerity was questioned by Greeley's back-bone friends as long as the Davis movement was regarded as still alive."

"The politicians, for the most part, either left the convention, to bathe their heads, or sat still, as idle and indifferent spectators. It was freely charged and believed that the nomination of Greeley was a put-up job of Brown's, and so delighted were the innocents at the success of the supposed scheme, that they hastened to ratify it.

After the convention adjourned, the streets were filled with a Babel of the most sorely puzzled individuals that the world has ever seen."

From the morning on which this dispatch was published the Tribune never mentioned the name of Gratz Brown editorially, except in a manner merely incidental. The Cincinnati Volksblatt, the ablest of the German papers which had inclined to Liberalism, received the result with ineffable disgust. It said, on the following morning:

"The Liberal Convention has thrown away the opportunity it had. We regret this, not merely on account of the forfeited success, but on account of the bungled management of the movement. In a contest for correct principles, and conducted by a rcal representative of the same, we could, if need be, have even submitted to a defeat. It is nothing new to us to struggle with minorities. The old Freesoil, afterwards Republican, party, was originally a minority party. But it was a minority party which had to become a majority party, because it had Truth and Justice on its side. We cannot say the same thing of a Greeley party."

How the Reformers were put to ignominous route on their main issue-the Tariff-is thus told by Mr. Bowles, a member of the syndicate and the best possible authority on this subject:

“But here we must consider how these people threw away their first and great opportunity. So soon as the delegates began to assemble on Saturday, the agitation of the tariff question commenced. Through Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, there was, as it were, a protracted meeting for discussion and consultation upon this subject. It threatened at one time to disrupt the convention. But it soon grew obvious that the great majority of the revenue

reformers themselves were indisposed to insist upon a radical declaration for free trade. It was clearly felt that the reform movement had passed beyond this special question, had reached to new elements of power, who held antagonistic views as to the tariff, and that the question of general reform, of a higher tone in the administration, of a more generous policy toward the South, of a burial of past issues, and the revolution and reconstruction of parties, were the more pressing and absorbing points of the movement. But a few of the revenue tariff doctrinaires-such men as Mr. Atkinson, of Boston, and Judge Hoadley and Stanley Matthews, of Cincinnati-would not yield their faith to these considerations. This was the corner-stone of their politics; it had grown in their minds to the first place in all reform; they felt that it would be disgrace and treason to yield it up, and they insisted upon it beyond the patience almost of their associates-certainly beyond the patience of the great body of the convention. Had they seen what such men as Horace White and David A. Wells saw, what independent outsiders saw and warned them of, and had they come frankly forward on Tuesday or Wednesday, or even on Thursday morning, and said to Mr. Greeley's friends and the Pennsylvania delegates-"We will yield this difference, we will accept the relegation of this disputed question to the congressional elections, and agree with you to its decision by congressional votes; but in view of the history of this movement, and in return for this concession, you must take a candidate from among our representative men-you must take Mr. Adams, or Mr. Trumbull, or Mr. Cox, or Mr. Brown"-doubtless the offer would have been accepted, and platform and candidate would have grown out of an honorable compromise. But they fought the platform against fate. They urged, first, positive declarations for free trade or revenue reform; next, they sought to juggle the question with fine words; and they only yielded the only honorable compromise, when they had lost the good-will of the convention, and lost the opportunity to make terms on the ticket."

SCHURZ SOOTHES HIS SORROW WITH A SYMPHONY.

We make room for one other extract from Mr. Bowles's letter, narrating how the man of the best ability, clearest view and most sincere purpose among them, vented his disgust after the crash and chaos came:

"The conduct of Governor Brown and its resultant nomination of Mr. Greeley were indeed a sad surprise and serious blow to Carl Schurz. Pledging in faltering voice his support of the nomination to the convention, he left it, weary with labor and sad in spirit, for the house of his friend, Judge Stallo. Entering there a circle of equally disappointed friends, he said: 'I am over

whelmed and discouraged.' There were no words of consolation or cheer to offer him, and a sad silence reigned for a few moments. Then he turned to the piano, and with his master hand poured out his feeling through one of Auber's most touching compositions. It seemed as if the composer's thought had never been so fitly rendered before, and tears filled the eyes of the whole company. But in a more noble way than he was wounded will the country revenge Carl Schurz. His high and generous course at this convention and his noble address to it won him the added respect of both friend and foe. Never did he stand so high in the estimation of the American people as at this moment, and he well deserves the compliment which Charles Francis Adams paid to him more than a year ago, in saying, 'that the one man who seemed to understand our institutions, their spirit, their history, their dangers and their possibilities, better than any other citizen, was of foreign birth, and his name, CARL SCHURZ.'"

CHAPTER XXI.

HORACE GREELEY.

Birth of the Hero-His Youthful Experiences-A Statesman in Leading Strings-Almost Drowned-The Mystery of Ox-yoking too Great for Him-Apprenticed to a Printer-Migrates to New York-Makes an Impression upon a Boss Printer-Begins to Develop his Eccentricities-His Grahamite Experience-An Eating Exploit not Down in Graham's Bill of Fare-Divers Instructive Anecdotes-Rise of the "Tribune"-Greeley's Characteristics as a Journalist-What Horace White Said of Him-Greeley Travels-His Imprisonment at Paris-His Terrible Ride to Placerville.

It seems almost foolhardy to commence at this stage of our book the biography of a man of such multiplex characteristics, and of such a public record as belong to Horace Greeley-the man whose name is better celebrated than that of perhaps any other American; the man who has been most intimately concerned in nearly half a century of New York and national politics; who has written a dozen ponderous volumes and uncollected matter enough to fill ten times as many; who has been on both extremes of nearly every important public question, and received alternately the encomiums and the curses of every free-speaking American citizen; who may truthfully be said to have brought on the late civil war, insisted upon conducting it both politically and militarily, nearly brought it to