174 POLITICAL LIFE -VIII 



toga of Mr. Samuel J. Tilden. His political fortunes were 

 then at their lowest point. With Mr. Dean Richmond of 

 Buffalo, he had been one of the managers of the Demo- 

 cratic party in the State, but, Mr. Richmond having died, 

 the Tweed wing of the party, supported by the canal con- 

 tractors, had declared war against Mr. Tilden, treated 

 him with contempt, showed their aversion to him in every 

 way, and, it was fully understood, had made up their 

 minds to depose him. I remember walking and talking 

 again and again with him under the colonnade at Congress 

 Hall, and, without referring to any person by name, he 

 dwelt upon the necessity of more earnest work in redeem- 

 ing American politics from the management of men ut- 

 terly unfit for leadership. Little did he or I foresee that 

 soon afterward his arch-enemy, Tweed, then in the same 

 hotel and apparently all-powerful, was to be a fugitive 

 from justice, and finally to die in prison, and that he, Mr. 

 Tilden himself, was to be elected governor of the State of 

 New York, and to come within a hair's-breadth of the 

 presidential chair at Washington. 



The other circumstance of a political character was my 

 attendance as an elector at the meeting of the Electoral 

 College at Albany, which cast the vote of New York for 

 General Grant. I had never before sat in such a body, and 

 its proceedings interested me. As president we elected 

 General Stewart L. Woodford, and as the body, after the 

 formal election of General Grant to the Presidency, was 

 obliged to send certificates to the governor of the State, 

 properly signed and sealed, and as it had no seal of its 

 own, General Woodford asked if any member had a seal 

 which he would lend to the secretary for that purpose. 

 Thereupon a seal-ring which Goldwin Smith had brought 

 from Rome and given me was used for that purpose. It 

 was an ancient intaglio. Very suitably, it bore the figure 

 of a "Winged Victory, " and it was again publicly used, 

 many years later, when it was affixed to the American 

 signature of the international agreement made at the 

 Peace Conference of The Hague. 



