When Mr. Blaine was for the last time in New York on his way to
Washington, stopping as was his habit at the Fifth Avenue Hotel,
he asked me to walk with him to his room, fronting on Twenty-third
Street, on the parlor floor; and he slowly, as if it were a task,
unlocked the door. There was a sparkle of autumnal crispness in
the air, and he had a fire, that glittered and threw shadows about
fitfully. There was not much to say. It was plain at last that Mr.
Blaine was fading, that he had within a few weeks failed fast. His
great, bright eyes were greater than ever, but not so bright. His face
was awfully white; not that brainy pallor that was familiar--something
else! He seated himself in the light of the fire, on an easy-chair.
There was a knock at his door, and a servant handed him a card, and
he said: "No;" and we were alone. I could not think of a word of
consolation; and in a moment he appeared to have forgotten me, and
stared in a fixed, rapt dream at the flickering flame in the grate.
It occurred to me to get up and go away quietly, as conversation was
impossible--for there was too much to say. It came to me that I ought
not to leave him alone. Something in him reminded me of the mystical
phrases of the transcendent paragraph of his oration on Garfield,
picturing the death of the second martyred President, by the ocean,
while far off white ships touched the sea and sky, and the fevered
face of the dying man felt "the breath of the eternal morning."
Some weeks earlier Mr. Blaine and I had had a deep talk about men and
things, and he was very kind, and his boundless generosity of
nature never revealed itself with a greater or sadder charm. He now
remembered that conversation--as a word disclosed--and said: "I could
have endured all things if my boys had not died." The door opened,
and his secretary walked in--and I took Mr. Blaine's hand for the
last time, saying, "Good-night," and he said, with a look that meant
farewell--"Good-by."
His grave is on a slope that when I saw it was goldenly sunny, and
the turf was strewn by his wife's hand with lilies--for it was Easter
morning! Close at his left was a steep, grassy bank, radiantly blue
with violets, and there was in the shining air the murmurous hum
of bees, making a slumbrous, restful music. Blaine's monument is a
hickory tree whose broken top speaks of storms, and at his feet is
a stone white as new snow, and on it only--and they are enough--the
initials "J.G.B.," that were the battle-cry of millions, and are and
shall be always to memory dear.
[Footnote I: This related to a matter General Sherman had mentioned in
another letter, and did not refer to the subject I was trying to get
him to consider.]
[Footnote J: General Sherman differed in this judgment with Blaine and
many Republicans who were not unfriendly to Arthur.]