America should feel especially charitable towards Louis the Great, called by Carlyle, Louis the Little, for banishing the Huguenots from France. What France lost America gained. Tyranny and intolerance always drive from their homes the best: those who have ability to think, courage to act, and a pride that can not be coerced.

The merits possessed by the Huguenots are exactly those which every man and nation needs. And these are simple virtues, too, whose cultivation stands within the reach of all. These are the virtues of the farmers and peasants and plain people who do the work of the world, and give good government its bone and sinew. To a great degree, so-called society is made up of parasites who fasten and feed upon the industrious and methodical.

In moral fiber and general characteristics the Huguenots and the Puritans were one. The Huguenots had, however, the added virtue of a dash of the Frenchman's love of beauty. By their excellent habits and loyalty to truth, as they saw it, they added a vast share to the prosperity and culture of the United States.

The life of Jay quite disproves the oft-found myth that a dash of Mephisto in a young man is a valuable adjunct. John Jay was neither precocious nor bad. It is further a refreshing fact to find that he was no prig, simply a good, healthy youngster who took to his books kindly and gained ground—made head upon the whole by grubbing.

His father was a hard-headed, prosperous merchant, who did business in New York, and moved his big family up to the little village of Rye because life in the country was simple and cheap. Thus did Peter Jay prove his commonsense.

Peter Jay copied every letter he wrote, and we now have these copy-books, revealing what sort of man he was. Religious he was, and scrupulously exact in all things. We see that he ordered Bibles from England, "and also six groce of Church Wardens," which I am told is a long clay pipe, "that hath a goodly flavor and doth not bite the tongue." He also at one time ordered a chest of tea, and then countermanded the order, having taken the resolve to "use no tea in my family while that rascally Tax is on—having a spring of good, pure water near my house." Which shows that a man can be very much in earnest and still joke.

We find by Peter Jay's letter-book that: "Johnny is about our brightest child. We have great hopes of him, and believe it will be wise to educate him for a preacher." In order to educate boys then, they were sent to live in the family of some man of learning. And so we find "Johnny" at twelve years of age installed in the parsonage at New Rochelle, the Huguenot settlement. The pastor was a Huguenot, and as only French was spoken in the household, the boy acquired the language, which afterwards stood him in good stead.

The pastor reported favorably, and when fifteen, young Jay was sent to King's College, which is now Columbia University, kings not being popular in America.

Doctor Samuel Johnson, who nowise resembled Ursa Major, was the president of the College at that time. He was also the faculty, for there were just thirty students and he did all the teaching himself. Doctor Johnson, true to his name, dearly loved a good book, and when teaching mathematics would often forget the topic and recite Ossian by the page, instead. Jay caught it, for the book craze is contagious and not sporadic. We take it by being exposed.

Livingston invited the boy to his house, and very soon we find the young man calling without special invitation, for Livingston had a beautiful daughter about John's age, who was fond of Ossian, too, or said she was.

And as this is not a serial love-story, there is no need of keeping the gentle reader in suspense, so I will explain that some years later John married the girl, and the mating was a very happy one.

After John had been to King's College two years we find in the faded and yellow old letter-book an item written by the father to the effect that: "Our Johnny is doing well at College. He seems sedate and intent on gaining knowledge; but rather inclines to Law instead of the Ministry."

Doctor Johnson was succeeded by Doctor Myles Cooper, a Fellow of Oxford, who used to wear his mortarboard cap and scholar's gown up Broadway. In young Jay's veins there was not a drop of British blood. Of his eight great-grandparents, five were French and three Dutch, a fact he once intimated in the Oxonian's presence. And then it was explained to the youth that if such were the truth it would be as well to conceal it.

Cooper sailed very soon for England, anathematizing "the blarsted country" in classic Latin as the ship passed out of the Narrows.

"England is a good place for him," said the laconic John Jay.

So John Jay was to be a lawyer. And the only way to be a lawyer in those days was to work in a lawyer's office. A goodly source of income to all established lawyers was the sums they derived for taking embryo Blackstones into their keeping. The greater a man's reputation as a lawyer, the higher he placed his fee for taking a boy in.

In those days there were no printed blanks, and a simple lease was often a day's work to write out; so it was not difficult to keep the boys busy. Besides that, they took care of the great man's horse, blacked his boots, swept the office, and ran errands. During the third year of apprenticeship, if all went well, the young man was duly admitted to the Bar. A stiff examination kept out the rank outsiders, but the nomination by a reputable attorney was equivalent to admittance, for all members knew that if you opposed an attorney today, tomorrow he might oppose you.

Law schools and medical colleges, be it known, are comparatively modern institutions—not quite so new, however, as business colleges, but pretty nearly so. And now in Chicago there is a "Barbers' University," which issues diplomas to men who can manipulate a razor and shears, whereas, until yesterday, boys learned to be barbers by working in a barber's shop. The good old way was to pass a profession along from man to man.

And it is so yet in a degree, for no man is allowed to practise either medicine or law until he has spent some time in the office of a practitioner in good standing.

In the Catholic Church, and also in the Episcopal, the novitiate is expected to serve for a time under an older clergyman; but all the other denominations have broken away, and now spring the fledgling on the world straight from the factory.

Murray has written some good, presentable English to the effect that young Jay, even at that time, had the inclination and ability to focus his mind upon the subject in hand. "He used to work just as steadily when his employer was away as when he was in the office," a fact which the grammarian seemed to regard as rather strange.

In a year we find that when Mr. Kissam went away he left the keys of the safe in John Jay's hands, with orders what to do in case of emergencies. Thus does responsibility gravitate to him who can shoulder it, and trust to the man who deserves it.

It was in Kissam's office that Jay acquired that habit of reticence and serene poise which, becoming fixed in character, made his words carry such weight in later years. He never gave snapshot opinions, or talked at random, or voiced any sentiment for which he could not give a reason.

Before his years of apprenticeship were over, John Jay, the quiet, the modest, the reticent, was known as a safe and competent lawyer—Kissam having pushed him forward as associate counsel in various difficult cases.

Meantime, certain chests of tea had been dumped into Boston Harbor, and the example had been followed by the "Mohawks" in New York. British oppression had made many Tories lukewarm, and then English rapacity had transformed these Tories into Whigs. Jay was one of these; and in newspapers and pamphlets, and from the platform, he had pleaded the cause of the Colonies. Opposition crystallized his reasons, and threats only served to make him reaffirm the truths he had stated.

So prominent had his utterances made his name, that one fine day he was nominated to attend the first Congress of the Colonies to be held in Philadelphia.

And so they journeyed on across the State to Trenton and down the Delaware River to Philadelphia, visiting, and cautiously discussing great issues as they went. Samuel Adams, too, was in the party, as reticent as Jay. Jay was twenty-nine and Samuel Adams fifty-two years old, but they became good friends, and Samuel once quietly said to John Adams, "That man Jay is young in years, but he has an old head."

Jay was the youngest man of the Convention, save one.

In Seventeen Hundred Seventy-eight, Jay was chosen president of the Continental Congress to succeed that other patriotic Huguenot, Laurens. The following year he was selected as the man to go to Spain, to secure from that country certain friendly favors.

His reception there was exceedingly frosty, and the mention of his two years on the ragged edge of court life at Madrid, in later years brought to his face a grim smile.

Spain's diplomatic policy was smooth hypocrisy and rank untruth, and all her promises, it seems, were made but to be broken. Jay's negotiations were only partially successful, but he came to know the language, the country and the people in a way that made his knowledge very valuable to America.

By Seventeen Hundred Eighty-one, England had begun to see that to compel the absolute submission of the Colonies was more of a job than she had anticipated. News of victories was duly sent to the "mother country" at regular intervals, but with these glad tidings were requests for more troops, and requisitions for ships and arms.

Finally, Cornwallis got the thing his soul desired—a fair fight. He was then acting on the defensive. The fight was short and sharp; and Colonel Alexander Hamilton, who led the charge, in ten minutes planted the Stars and Stripes on his ramparts.

That night Cornwallis was the "guest" of Washington, and the next day a dinner was given in his honor.

He was then obliged to write to the Home Secretary, "We have met the enemy, and we are theirs"—but of course he did not express it just exactly that way. Then it was that King George, for the first time, showed a disposition to negotiate for peace.

As peace commissioners, America named Franklin, John Adams, Laurens, Jay and Jefferson.

Jefferson refused to leave his wife, who was in delicate health. Adams was at The Hague, just closing up a very necessary loan. Laurens had been sent to Holland on a diplomatic mission, and his ship having been overhauled by a British man-of-war, he was safely in that historic spot, the Tower of London.

So Jay and Franklin alone met the English commissioners, and Jay stated to them the conditions of peace.

Jay quitted Paris in May, Seventeen Hundred Eighty-four, having been gone from his native land eight years. When he reached New York there was a great demonstration in his honor. Triumphal arches were erected across Broadway, houses and stores were decorated with bunting, cannons boomed, and bells rang. The freedom of the city was presented to him in a gold box, with an exceedingly complimentary address, engrossed on parchment, and signed by one hundred of the leading citizens.

Jay spent just one day in New York, and then rode on horseback up to the old farm at Rye, Westchester County, to see his father. That evening there was a service of thanksgiving at the village church, after which the citizens repaired to the Jay mansion, one story high and eighty feet long, where a barrel of cider was tapped, and "a groce of Church Wardens" passed around, with free tobacco for all.

It is rather curious (or it isn't, I'm not sure which) how most statesmen have quit public life several times during their careers, like the prima donnas who make farewell tours. The ingratitude of republics is proverbial, but to limit ingratitude to republics shows a lack of experience. The progeny of the men who tired of hearing Aristides called The Just are very numerous. Of course it is easy to say that he who expects gratitude does not deserve it; but the fact remains that the men who know it are yet stung by calumny when it comes their way.

That fine demonstration in Jay's honor was in great part to overwhelm and stamp out the undertone of growl and snarl that filled the air. Many said that peace had been gained at awful cost, that Jay had deferred to royalty and trifled with the wishes of the people in making terms.

And now Jay had got home, back to his family and farm, back to quiet and rest. The long, hard fight had been won and America was free. For eight years had he toiled and striven and planned: much had been accomplished—not all he hoped, but much.

All through life men reach these places where they say, "Here will we build three tabernacles"; but out of the silence comes the imperative Voice, "Arise, and get thee hence, for this is not thy rest."

And now the war was over, peace was concluded; but war leaves a country in chaos. The long, slow work of reconstruction and of binding up a nation's wounds must follow. America was independent, but she had yet to win from the civilized world the recognition that she must have in order to endure.

Jay was importuned by Washington to take the position of Secretary of Foreign Affairs, one of the most important offices to be filled.

He accepted, and discharged the exacting duties of the place for five years.

Then came the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and the election of Washington as President of the United States.

Washington wrote to Jay: "There must be a Court, perpetual and Supreme, to which all questions of internal dispute between States or people be referred. This Court must be greater than the Executive, greater than any individual State, separated and apart from any political party. You must be the first official head of the Executive."

In Seventeen Hundred Ninety-four, came serious complications with Great Britain, growing out of the construction of terms of peace made in Paris eleven years before.

Some one must go to Great Britain and make a new treaty in order to preserve our honor and save us from another war.

Franklin was dead; Adams as Vice-President could not be spared; Hamilton's fiery temper was dangerous—no one could accomplish the delicate mission so well as Jay.

Jay, self-centered and calm, said little; but in compliance with Washington's wish resigned his office, and set sail with full powers to use his own judgment in everything, and the assurance that any treaty he made would be ratified.

Arriving in England, he at once opened negotiations with Lord Grenville, and in five months the new treaty was signed.

It fixed the boundary-line between the State of Maine and Canada; provided for the surrender of British posts in the Far West; that neither nation was to allow enlistments within its territory by a third nation at war with another; arranged for the surrender of fugitives charged with murder or forgery; and made definite terms as to various minor, but none the less important, questions.

A storm of opposition greeted the treaty when its terms were made known in America. Jay was accused of bartering away the rights of America, and indignation meetings were held, because Jay had not insisted on apologies, and set sums of indemnity on this, that and the other.

Nevertheless, Washington ratified the treaty; and when Jay arrived in America there was a greeting fully as cordial and generous as that on the occasion of his other homecoming.

In fact, while he was absent, his friends had put him in nomination as Governor of New York. His election to that office occurred just two days before he arrived, and when he landed his senses were mystified by hearing loud hurrahs for "Governor Jay."

Over a quarter of a century had passed since John Adams and John Jay had met on horseback out there on the New Jersey turnpike. Their intimacy had been continuous and their labors as important as ever engrossed the minds of men, but in it all there was neither jealousy nor bickering. They were friends.

At the close of Jay's gubernatorial term, President Adams nominated him for the office of Chief Justice, made vacant by the resignation of Oliver Ellsworth. The Senate unanimously confirmed the nomination, but Jay refused to accept the place.

For twenty-eight years he had served his country—served it in its most trying hours. He was not an old man in years, but the severity and anxiety of his labors had told on his health, and the elasticity of youth had gone from his brain forever. He knew this, and feared the danger of continued exertion. "My best work is done," he said; "if I continue I may undo the good I have accomplished. I have earned a rest."

He retired to the ancestral farm at Bedford, Westchester County, to enjoy his vacation. In a year his wife died, and the shock told on his already shattered nerves.

And so he lived out his days as a partial recluse, deep in problems of "raising watermelons, and sheep that would not jump fences." He worked with his hands, wore blue jeans, voted at every town election, but to a great degree lived only in the past. The problems of church and village politics and farm life filled his declining days.

To a great degree his physical health came back, but the problems of statecraft he left to other heads and hands.

His religious nature manifested itself in various philanthropic schemes, and the Bible Society he founded endures even unto this day. These things afforded a healthful exercise for that tireless brain which refused to run down.

His daughters made his home ideal, their love and gentleness soothing his declining years.

No one has ever made the claim that Jay possessed genius. He had something which is better, though, for most of the affairs of life, and that is commonsense. In his intellect there was not the flash of Hamilton, nor the creative quality possessed by Jefferson, nor the large all-roundness of Franklin.

He was the average man who has trained and educated and made the best use of every faculty and every opportunity. He was genuine; he was honest; and if he never surprised his friends by his brilliancy, he surely never disappointed them through duplicity.

He made no promises that he could not keep; he held out no vain hopes.

As a diplomat he seems nearly the ideal. We have been taught that the line of demarcation between diplomacy and untruth is very shadowy. But truth is very good policy and in the main answers the purpose much better than the other thing. I am quite willing to leave the matter to those who have tried both.

We can not say that Jay was "magnetic," for magnetic men win the rabble; but Jay did better: he won the confidence and admiration of the strong and discerning. His manner was gentle and pleasing; his words few, and as a listener he set a pace that all novitiates in the school of diplomacy would do well to follow.

The sympathetic listener at a lecture or sermon is the only one who gets his money's worth. If you would get good, lend your sympathy to a speaker, and if, accidentally, you imbibe heresy, you can easily throw it overboard when you get home.

John Jay was quiet and undemonstrative in speech, cultivating a fine reserve. In debate he never fired all his guns, and his best battles were won with the powder that was never exploded. "You had always better keep a small balance to your credit," he once advised a young attorney.

When the first Congress met, Jay was not in favor of complete independence from England. He asked only for simple justice, and said, "The middle course is best." He listened to John Adams and Patrick Henry and quietly discussed the matter with Samuel Adams; but it was some time before he saw that the density of King George was hopeless, and that the work of complete separation was being forced upon the Colonies by the blindness and stupidity of the British Parliament.

He then accepted the issue.

First to pacify and placate, then to win and hold those worse than neutrals, was the work of John Jay. While Washington was in the field, Jay, with tireless pen, upheld the cause, and by his speech and presence kept anarchy at bay.

As president of the Committee of Safety he showed he could do something more than talk and write. When Tories refused to take the oath of allegiance he quietly wrote the order to imprison or banish; and with friend, foe or kinsman there was neither dalliance nor turning aside. His heart was in the cause—his property, his life. The time for argument had passed.

In the gloom that followed the defeat of Washington at Brooklyn, Jay issued an address to the people that is a classic in its fine, stern spirit of hope and strength. Congress had the address reprinted and sent broadcast, and also translated and printed in German.

His work divides itself by a strange coincidence into three equal parts. Twenty-eight years were passed in youth and education; twenty-eight years in continuous public work; and twenty-eight years in retirement and rest.

As one of that immortal ten, mentioned by a great English statesman, who gave order, dignity, stability and direction to the cause of American Independence, the name of John Jay is secure.

But I must not digress—the particular thing I wish to explain is that one day at recess the best scholar was in tears, and I went to her and asked what was the matter, and she told me that some of the big girls had openly declared that she—my fine, freckled girl, the check-aproned, the invincible—held her place at the head of the school only through favoritism.

I burned with rage and resentment and proposed fight; then I burst out crying and together we mingled our tears.

All this was long ago. Since then I have been in many climes, and met many men, and read history a bit—I hope not without profit. And this I have learned: that the person who stands at the head of his class (be he country lad or presidential candidate) is always the target for calumny and the unkindness of contemporaries who can neither appreciate nor understand.

Not long ago I spent several days at Auburn, New York, so named by some pioneer who, when the Nineteenth Century was very young, journeyed thitherward with a copy of Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" in his pack.

"We didn't have such things when I was a boy!" came the tremulous voice.

And then the newcomer explained to me that he was eighty-seven years old last May, and that he well remembered a time when a plain oaken gallows and a strong rope were good enough for Auburn—"provided Bill Seward didn't get the fellow free," added my new-found friend.

The sound and the place and the company gave me a creepy feeling, and I excused myself and made my way out past armed guards, through doorways where iron bars clicked and snapped, and steel bolts that held in a thousand men shot back to let me out, out into a freer air and a better atmosphere. And as I passed through the last overhanging arch where a one-armed guard wearing a G.A.R. badge turned a needlessly big key, there came unbeckoned across my inward sight a vision of a check-aproned girl in tears, sobbing with head on desk. And I said to myself: "Yes, yes! country girl or statesman, you shall drink the bitter potion that is the penalty of success—drink it to the very dregs. If you would escape moral and physical assassination, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing—court obscurity, for only in oblivion does safety lie."

All mud sticks, but no mud is immortal, and that senile fling at the name of Seward is the last flickering, dying word of detraction that can be heard in the town that was his home for full half a century, or in the land he served so well. And yet it was in Auburn that mob spirit once found a voice; and when Seward was Lincoln's most helpful adviser, and his sons were at the front serving the country's cause, cries of "Burn his house! Burn his house!" came to the distracted ears of wife and daughter.

Time marks wondrous changes; and the city where William Lloyd Garrison lived in "a rat-hole," as reported by Boston's Mayor, now honors Commonwealth Avenue with his statue. And so the sons of Seward's enemies have devoted willing dollars to preserving "that classic face and spindling form" in deathless bronze.

I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that all the worry of the world is quite useless. And on no subject affecting mortals is there so much worry as on that of (no, not love!) parents' ambitions for their children. When the dimpled darling toddles and lisps and chatters, the satisfaction he gives is unalloyed; for he is so small and insignificant, his demands so imperious, that the entire household dance attendance on the wee tyrant, and count it joy. But by and by the things at which we used to laugh become presumptuous, and that which was once funny is now perverse. And the more practical a man is, the larger his stock of Connecticut commonsense, the greater his disillusionment as his children grow to manhood. When he beholds dawdling inanity and dowdy vanity growing lush as jimson, where yesterday, with strained prophetic vision, he saw budding excellence and worth, his soul is wrung by a worry that knows no peace. The matter is so poignantly personal that he dare not share it with another in confessional, and so he hugs his grief to his heart, and tries to hide it even from himself.

The late Commodore Vanderbilt is reported to have said, "I have over a dozen sons, and not one is worth a damn." I fear me that every father with sons grown to manhood has at some time voiced the same sentiment, curtailed, possibly, only as to numbers, and softened by another expletive, which does not mitigate the anguish of his cry, as he sees the dreams he had for his baby boys fade away into a mist of agonizing tears.

And is all this worry the penalty that Nature exacts for dreaming dreams that can not in their very nature come true? Jean Jacques Rousseau, who wrote so beautifully on child-study, avoided the risk of failure by putting his children into an asylum; several "Communities" since have set apart certain women to be mothers to all, and bring up and care for the young, and strangely, with no apparent loss to the children; and Bellamy prophesies a day when the worries of parenthood will all be transferred to a "committee."

The years went by and the parental distrust slackened very little. The boy was slim and slender and his hair was tow-colored and his head too big for his body. He had gotten a goodly smattering of education some way and was intent on being a lawyer. He seemed to know that if he was to succeed he must get well away from the parent nest, and out of the reach of daily advice.

His desire was to go "Out West," and the particular objective point was Auburn, New York.

The father gave him fifty dollars as a starter, with the final word, "I expect you'll be back all too soon."

And so young Seward started away, with high hopes and a firm determination that he would agreeably disappoint his parents by not going back.

He reached Albany by steamboat, and embarked on a sumptuous canal packet that bore a waving banner on which were the words woven in gold, "Westward Ho!"

In Eighteen Hundred Thirty-four, Seward was the Whig candidate for Governor of New York. He was defeated by W.L. Marcy. Four years later he was again a candidate against Marcy and defeated him by ten thousand majority.

Seward was then thirty-six years of age, and was counted one of the very first among the lawyers of the State, and in accepting the office of Governor he made decided financial sacrifices.

Seward was a man of positive ideas, and, although not arbitrary in manner, yet had a silken strength of will that made great rents in the mesh of other men's desires. Before a court, his quiet but firm persistence along a certain line often dictated the verdict. The faculty of grasping a point firmly and securely was his in a marked measure. And any man who can quietly override the wishes and ambitions of other men is first well feared, and then thoroughly hated.

By his influence the law's delay in the courts of chancery was curtailed, and this prepared the way for radical changes in the Constitution. He inaugurated the geological survey that led to making "Potsdam outcrop" classic, and "Medina sandstone" a product that is so known wherever a man goes forth in the fields of earth carrying a geologist's hammer.

Seward said that insane people were simply those who were mentally ill, and that "Hospital" was the proper term. But the classicists retorted, "Nay, nay, William Henry, you have had your way in many things and here we will now have ours." It has taken us full a century officially to make the change, and the plain folks from the hills still refuse to ratify it, and will for many a lustrum.

It was during Seward's administration that the "debtors' prison" was done away with, and it was, too, through his earnest recommendation that the last trace of law for slaveholding was wiped from the statute-books of the State of New York.

The question of slavery was taken up most exhaustively in what was known as the "Virginia Controversy." This interesting correspondence can be seen in a stout volume in most public libraries. It is a series of letters that passed between Governor Seward of New York and the Governor of Virginia, as to the requisition of two persons in New York charged by the Governor of Virginia with abducting slaves. Seward made the patent point, and backed it up with a forest of reasons in politest English, that the accused persons being charged with abducting slaves, and there being no such thing as slaves known in New York, no person in New York could be apprehended for stealing slaves—for slaves were things that had no existence.

In this correspondence he placed himself on record as an Abolitionist of the Abolitionists; and the name of Seward became listed then and there for vengeance—or immortality. The subject had been forced upon him, and he then expressed the sentiment that he continued to voice until Eighteen Hundred Sixty-five, that America could not exist half-free and half-slave. It must be a land of slaveholders and slaves, or a land of free-men—he was fully and irrevocably committed to the cause.

At the close of his second term Seward found his personal affairs in rather an unsettled condition, the expenses of official position having exceeded his income. He had had a goodly taste of the ingratitude of republics, and philosopher though he was, he was yet too young to know that his experience in well-doing was not unique, a fact he came to comprehend full well, in later years. And so he did that very human thing—declared his intention of retiring permanently from public life.

Once back at Auburn, clients flocked to him, and he took his pick of business. And yet we find that public affairs were in his mind. Vexed questions of State policy were brought to him to decide, and journeys were made to Ohio and Michigan in the interests of men charged with slave-stealing. There was little money in such practise and small honors, but his heart was in the work.

In Eighteen Hundred Forty-four, Seward entered with much zest into the canvass in behalf of Henry Clay for President, as he thought Clay's election would surely lead the way to general emancipation.

From Washington came the urgent request that Seward should be sent to the United States Senate. In Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, he was chosen senator and from the first became the trusted leader of the administration party.

The year after Seward's election to the Senate, President Taylor died and Vice-President Fillmore (who had the happiness to live in the village of East Aurora, New York) succeeded to the office, but Seward still remained leader of the Anti-Slavery Party.

Seward's second term as United States Senator closed in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-one. In Eighteen Hundred Fifty-five, when his first term expired, there was a very strenuous effort made against his re-election. His strong and continued anti-slavery position had caused him to be thoroughly hated both North and South. He was spoken of as "a seditious agitator and a dangerous man."

But in spite of opposition he was again sent back to Washington. Small, slim, gentle, modest and low-voiced, he was pointed out in Pennsylvania Avenue as "one who reads much and sees quite through the deeds of men."

In Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six, there was a goodly little demonstration in favor of Seward for President, but the idea of running such a radical for the chief office of the people was quickly downed; and Seward himself knew the temper of the times too well to take the matter very seriously.

But the years between Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six and Eighteen Hundred Sixty were years of agitation and earnest thought, and the idea that slavery was merely a local question was getting both depolarized and dehorned. The non-slaveholding North was rubbing its sleepy eyes, and asking, Who is this man Seward, anyway? The belief was growing that Seward, Garrison, Sumner and Phillips were something more than self-seeking agitators, and many declared them true patriots. In every town and city, in every Northern State, political clubs sprang into being and their battle-cry was "Seward!" It seemed to be a foregone conclusion that Seward would be the next President. When the convention met, the first ballot showed one hundred seventy-three votes for Seward and one hundred two for Lincoln, the rest, scattering. But Seward's friends had marshaled their entire strength—all the rest was opposition—while Lincoln was an unknown quantity.

He entered upon a hearty and vigorous campaign in support of Lincoln—making a tour through the West and being greeted everywhere with an enthusiasm that rivaled that shown for the candidate.

Seward said to his wife, when the news came that Lincoln was nominated: "He will be elected, but he will have to face the greatest difficulties and carry the greatest burdens that ever a man has been called to bear. He will need me, but look you, my dear, I will not serve under him. I must be at the head or nowhere."

Seward and his two sons—William and Frederick—met the coming President, and the boys laughed at the dusty, uncouth, sad and awkward individual, six feet five, who disembarked.

The carriage was waiting, but Lincoln refused to ride, saying, "Boys, let's walk," and so they walked up the hill, in through past the stone gateposts where the lions stood that shed tears. Seward ran ahead into the house and said to his wife: "Look you, my dear, we have misjudged this man. Do not laugh. He is the greatest man in the world!"

Early in April, Eighteen Hundred Sixty-five, Seward met with a serious accident by being thrown from his carriage and dashed against the curbstone. One arm and both jaws were fractured, and besides he was badly bruised in other parts of his body. On April Thirteenth, Lincoln returned from his trip to Richmond, where he had had an interview with Grant. That evening he walked over from the White House to Seward's residence. The stricken man was totally unable to converse, but Lincoln, sitting on the edge of the bed and holding the old man's thin hands, told in solemn, serious monotone of the ending of the war; of what he had seen and heard; of the plans he had made for sending soldiers home and providing for an army whipped and vanquished, and of what was best to do to bind up a nation's wounds.

Five years before, these men had stood before the world as rivals. Then they joined hands as friends, and during the four years of strife and blood had met each day and advised and counseled concerning every great detail. Their opinions often differed widely, but there was always frank expression and, in the main, their fears and doubts and hopes had all been one.

But now at last the smoke had cleared away, and they had won. The victory had been too dearly bought for proud boast or vain exultation, but victory still it was.

At last the presence of the nurse told Lincoln it was time to go; in grave jest he half-apologized for his long stay, and told of a man in Sangamon County who used to say there is no medicine like good news. And rumor has it that he then stooped and kissed the sick man's cheek. And then he went his way.

The next night at the same hour a man entered the Seward home, saying that he had been sent with messages by the doctor. Being refused admittance to the sick-chamber, he drew a pistol and endeavored to shoot Seward's son who guarded the door; but being foiled in this he crushed the young man's skull with the heavy weapon, and springing over his body dashed at the emaciated figure of Seward with uplifted dagger. A dozen times he struck at the face and throat and breast of the almost dying man, and then thinking he had done his work made rapidly away.

At the same time, linked by Fate in a sort of poetic justice, with the thought that if one deserved death so did the other, Hate had with surer aim sent an assassin's bullet home—and Lincoln died.

Weeks passed and the strong vitality that had served Seward in such good stead did not forsake him. Men of his stamp are hard to kill.

Health and strength came slowly back, and happy was the day when he was carried to the office of Secretary of State and, propped in his chair, again began his work. Another President had come, but meet it was that the Secretary of State should still hold his place.

Seward lived full eleven years after that, seemingly dragging with unquenched spirit that slashed and broken form. But the glint did not fade from his eye, nor did the proud head lose its poise.

He died in his office among his books and papers, sane and sensible up to the very moment when his spirit took its flight.