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.