188 POLITICAL LIFE IX 



who say that speaking produces no real effect on the con- 

 victions of men regarding party matters. Some speaking 

 does not, but there .is a kind of speaking which does, and 

 of this were these two masterpieces, so different from 

 each other in matter and manner, and yet converging 

 upon the same points, intellectual and moral. 



Before I close regarding Garfield, it may be well to give 

 a few more recollections of him. The meeting ended, we 

 drove to my house on the university grounds, and shortly 

 before our arrival he asked me, "How did you like my 

 speech?" I answered: "Garfield, I have known you too 

 long and think too highly of you to flatter you ; but I will 

 simply say what I would say under oath : it was the best 

 speech I ever heard. " This utterance of mine was delib- 

 erate, expressing my conviction, and he was evidently 

 pleased with it. 



Having settled down in front of the fire in my library, 

 we began to discuss the political situation, and his talk 

 remains to me among the most interesting things of my 

 life. He said much regarding the history of the currency 

 question and his relations to it, and from this ran rapidly 

 and suggestively through a multitude of other questions 

 and the relations of public men to them. One thing which 

 struck me was his judicially fair and even kindly estimates 

 of men who differed from him. Very rarely did he speak 

 harshly or sharply of any one, differing in this greatly 

 from Mr. Conkling, who, in all his conversations, and es- 

 pecially in one at that same house not long before, seemed 

 to consider men who differed from him as enemies of the 

 human race. 



Under Mr. Hayes, the successor of General Grant in the 

 Presidency, I served first as a commissioner at the Paris 

 Exposition, ancftEen as minister to Germany. Both these 

 services will be discussed in the chapters relating to my 

 diplomatic life, but I may refer briefly to my acquaintance 

 with him at this period. 



I had met him but once previously, and that was during 

 his membership of Congress when he came to enter his son 



