HENDRICKS, SHERMAN, BANCROFT -1884 -1891 223 



urged me to accept the nomination to Congress from that 

 district, and assured me that the nomination was equiva- 

 lent to an election. There were some reasons why such a 

 position was attractive to me, but the more I thought of 

 it the more it seemed to me that to discharge these duties 

 properly would take me from other work to which I was 

 pledged. Before deciding the question, however, I deter- 

 mined to consult two old friends who were then living in 

 London hotels adjacent to my own. The first of these was 

 my dear old instructor, with whom my relations had been 

 of the kindest ever since my first year at Yale President 

 Porter. 



On my laying the matter before him, he said, "Accept 

 by all means ' ' ; but as I showed him the reasons on both 

 sides, he at last reluctantly agreed with me that probably 

 it was best to send a declination. 



The other person consulted was Mr. James Belden of 

 Syracuse, afterward a member of Congress from the 

 Onondaga district, a politician who had a most intimate 

 knowledge of men and affairs in our State. We had been, 

 during a long period, political adversaries, but I had 

 come to respect sundry qualities he had more lately ex- 

 hibited, and therefore went to him as a practical man 

 and laid the case before him. He expressed his great 

 surprise that I should advise with him, my old political 

 adversary, but he said, "Since you do come, I will give 

 you the very best advice I can." 



We then went over the case together, and I feel sure 

 that he advised me as well as the oldest of my friends 

 could have done, and with a shrewdness and foresight 

 all his own. 



One of his arguments ran somewhat as follows: "To 

 be successful in politics a man must really think of no- 

 thing else ; it must be his first thought in the morning and 

 his last at night; everything else must yield to it. Here- 

 tofore you have quietly gone on your way, sought nothing, 

 and taken what has been freely tendered you in the in- 

 terest of the party and of the public. I know the Elmira 



