I first met General Grant in my own house. I had often been invited to
his house. As far back as 1870 John Russell Young, a friend from
boyhood, came with an invitation to pass the week-end as the
President’s guest at Long Branch. Many of my friends had cottages
there. Of afternoons and evenings they played an infinitesimal game of
draw poker.
“John,” my answer was, “I don’t dare to do so. I know that I shall fall
in love with General Grant. We are living in rough times—particularly
in rough party times. We have a rough presidential campaign ahead of
us. If I go down to the seashore and go in swimming and play penny-ante
with General Grant I shall not be able to do my duty.”
It was thus that after the general had gone out of office and made the
famous journey round the world, and had come to visit relatives in
Kentucky, that he accepted a dinner invitation from me, and I had a
number of his friends to meet him.
Among these were Dr. Richardson, his early schoolmaster when the Grant
family lived at Maysville, and Walter Haldeman, my business partner, a
Maysville boy, who had been his schoolmate at the Richardson Academy,
and General Cerro Gordo Williams, then one of Kentucky’s Senators in
Congress, and erst his comrade and chum when both were lieutenants in
the Mexican War. The bars were down, the windows were shut and there
was no end of hearty hilarity. Dr. Richardson had been mentioned by Mr.
Haldeman as “the only man that ever licked Grant,” and the general
promptly retorted “he never licked me,” when the good old doctor said,
“No, Ulysses, I never did—nor Walter, either—for you two were the best
boys in school.”
I said “General Grant, why not give up this beastly politics, buy a
blue-grass farm, and settle down to horse-raising and tobacco growing
in Kentucky?” And, quick as a flash—for both he and the company
perceived that it was “a leading question”—he replied, “Before I can
buy a farm in Kentucky I shall have to sell a farm in Missouri,” which
left nothing further to be said.
There was some sparring between him and General Williams over their
youthful adventures. Finally General Williams, one of the readiest and
most amusing of talkers, returned one of General Grant’s sallies with,
“Anyhow, I know of a man whose life you took unknown to yourself.” Then
he told of a race he and Grant had outside of Galapa in 1846. “Don’t
you remember,” he said, “that riding ahead of me you came upon a
Mexican loaded with a lot of milk cans piled above his head and that
you knocked him over as you swept by him?”
“Yes,” said Grant, “I believed if I stopped or questioned or even
deflected it would lose me the race. I have not thought of it since.
But now that you mention it I recall it distinctly.”
“Well,” Williams continued, “you killed him. Your horse’s hoof struck
him. When, seeing I was beaten, I rode back, his head was split wide
open. I did not tell you at the time because I knew it would cause you
pain, and a dead greaser more or less made no difference.”
Later on General Grant took desk room in Victor Newcomb’s private
office in New York. There I saw much of him, and we became good
friends. He was the most interesting of men.
Soldierlike—monosyllabic—in his official and business dealings he threw
aside all formality and reserve in his social intercourse, delightfully
reminiscential, indeed a capital story teller. I do not wonder that he
had constant and disinterested friends who loved him sincerely.