Of course all this is private.
_P.S._--This note was written before receipt of yours. Pray
publish nothing of the kind you intimate unless you first
permit me to see the proof. Don't be afraid of the enclosed
items. They are rock-ribbed for truth and for a good rendering
of public opinion.
Mr. Blaine refers in the closing paragraph to the proposition I made
to him to publish the true story of his candidacy--substantially the
same pressed upon the attention of General Sherman. Between them they
suppressed me, but it is due them that this chapter of history should
be known now that they are gone.
I had the privilege of walking with Mr. Blaine in the beautiful and
fragrant parks at Homburg, in Southern Germany, in the summer of 1887,
and discussing with him the question whether he should be a candidate
for the Republican nomination the next spring. He then seemed to be
very well, but exertion speedily fatigued him. He was on sight a very
striking personage, and always instantly regarded with interest by
strangers. His personal appearance was of the utmost refinement and of
irreproachable dignity. His absolute cleanliness was something dainty,
his dress simple but fitting perfectly and of the best material. His
face was very pale, but his sparkling eyes contradicted the pallor.
His form was erect, and his figure that of youth. His hair and beard
were exquisitely white. His mouth had the purity of a child's, and
he never had tasted tobacco or used spirituous liquors, save when his
physician had recommended a little whiskey, and then not enough to
color a glass. He drank sparingly of claret and champagne, caring only
for the flavor. He was gentle, kindly, genial, and in a manly sense
beautiful. There are many distinguished English people at Homburg in
the season, and they were gratified to meet Mr. Blaine, and charmed
with him. It required no ceremony to announce him as a personage--a
man who had made events--and he never posed or gave the slightest
hint, in his movements, of conscious celebrity. I never saw him
bothered by being aware of himself but once, and that was when, across
the street from the Fifth Avenue Hotel, in the dusk of an evening, he
shaded his face with his hand, and looked curiously at ten thousand
people who were gazing at the house, and shouting madly for him,
expecting that he would appear at a window and make acknowledgment of
their enthusiasm. Suddenly he saw in the glance of one beside him that
he was curiously yet doubtfully regarded, and hastened away in fear of
his friends, who in their delight at discovering him would have become
a mob.
In Homburg he seemed to care for others' opinions about the proper
course for him to take; and the substance of that which I had to
say--and he seemed to think me in a way representative--was that he
alone must decide for himself, as he only knew all the circumstances
and elements that must be considered in a decision. Once we walked
the main street of the town in the night--and it is then a very lonely
place, for it is the fashion to get up in the morning at six o'clock,
and take the waters and the music--and that time I was impressed, and
the impression abided, that the inner conviction of Mr. Blaine was he
had not the vitality to safely take the Presidency if he held it in
his hand; that he believed the office would wear him out--that it was
a place of dealing with persons who would worry away his existence;
that he felt he could not endure the wear and tear and pressure of
the first position, and preferred the Secretaryship of State, with
the hope of going on with his South American policy, which he had
developed in Garfield's time, brief as that was; and I conjectured
that all this had been in his mind when he wanted Sherman and Lincoln
to be the ticket in 1884. And it occurred to me with so much force as
the logic of many things he said, that I accepted it as true, and was
reminded of his weary exclamation once of a good friend whose moods
were changeable: "Now that he is right, stay with him. He takes the
health out of me with his uncertainties."
The Secretaryship of State he cared for; in that office the world was
all before him, and he was fully himself, and was not fretted by
a perpetual procession of favor-seekers. The argument his urgent
admirers used with him was that it would be easier to make up his mind
than to convince a President, and that as the Chief of State he could
throw the work on the Cabinet; but he was not satisfied. The Florence
letter to me seemed familiar, for it was a reminder of Homburg, and
its sincerity was in all the lines and between the lines; and it was
addressed to a friend in Pittsburg, that it might not be suppressed in
New York. He had very close and influential friends who did not divine
his true attitude, or would not admit that they had, and insisted that
he was really well and strong and tough, better than he had been, and
that he should not be humored in his fancy that he was an invalid.
This feeling continued even to 1892, though he had been meantime
painfully broken by a protracted illness. It will be remembered that
in the correspondence between General Harrison as President-elect and
Mr. Blaine, when the Secretaryship of State was offered and accepted,
there appeared harmony of views concerning Pan-Americanism; that Mr.
Blaine enjoyed the office and that his official labors during the
Harrison Administration were of the highest distinction, showing
his happiest characteristics. The difference as to duties that arose
between the President and the Secretary was forgotten, and their
mutual sympathies abounded, when there came upon them, in their
households, the gravest, tenderest sorrows.
[Illustration: BLAINE'S GRAVE AT WASHINGTON, D.C. THE TREE AT THE LEFT
MARKS THE HEAD OF THE GRAVE, AND THE FIRST OF THE THREE LOW STONES IN
THE FOREGROUND, NUMBERING FROM THE LEFT, MARKS THE FOOT.