216 POLITICAL LIFE-XI 



Gibson remarked that the best speech he had ever 

 heard in the Senate was made by John Sherman. 



As regards civil-service matters, I found on all sides 

 an opinion that Mr. Cleveland was, just as far as possible, 

 basing his appointments upon merit. Gibson mentioned 

 the fact that a candidate for an important office in his 

 State, who had committed three murders, had secured 

 very strong backing, but that President Cleveland utterly 

 refused to appoint him. 



With President Cleveland I had a very interesting in- 

 terview. He referred to his visit to Cornell University, 

 said that he would have liked nothing so well as to go 

 more thoroughly through its various departments, and, as 

 when I formerly saw him, expressed his regret at the loss 

 of such opportunities as an institution of that kind af- 

 fords. 



At this time I learned from him and from those near 

 him something regarding his power for hard work. It 

 was generally understood that he insisted on writing out 

 all important papers and conducting his correspondence 

 in his own hand, and the result was that during a con- 

 siderable period of the congressional sessions he sat at 

 his desk until three o'clock in the morning. 



It was evident that his up-and-down, curt, independent 

 way did not at all please some of the leading members 

 of his party; in fact, there were signs of a serious es- 

 trangement caused by the President's refusals to yield 

 to senators and other leaders of the party in the matter 

 of appointments to office. To illustrate this feeling, a 

 plain, bluff Western senator, Mr. Sawyer of Wisconsin, 

 told me a story. 



Senator Sawyer had built up a fortune and gained a 

 great influence in his State by a very large and extensive 

 business in pine lumber, and he had a sort of rough, 

 quaint woodman's wit which was at times very amusing. 

 He told me that, some days before, two of his most eminent 

 Democratic colleagues in the Senate were just leaving the 

 Capitol, and from something they said he saw that they 



