but the poor and the lowly in the uttermost ends of the earth, rise and uncover before him. He has studied the needs and the defects of many systems of government, and he has returned a better American than ever, with a wealth of knowledge and experience added to the hard common sense which shone so conspicuously in all the fierce light that beat upon him during sixteen years, the most trying, the most portentous, the most perilous in the nation's history.

Vilified and reviled, ruthlessly aspersed by unnumbered presses, not in other lands but in his own, assaults upon him have seasoned and strengthened his hold on the public heart. Calumny's ammunition has all been exploded; the powder has all been burned once ; its force is spent; the name of Grant will glitter a bright and imperishable star in the diadem of the republic when those who have tried to tarnish that name have moldered in forgotten graves, and when their memories and their epitaphs have vanished utterly.

Never elated by success, never depressed by adversity, he has ever, in peace as in war, shown the genius of common sense. The terms he prescribed for Lee's surrender foreshadowed the wisest prophecies and principles of true reconstruction. Victor in the greatest war of modern times, he quickly signalized his aversion to war and his love of peace by an arbitration to internal disputes, which stands as the wisest, the most majestic example of its kind in the world's diplomacy. When inflation, at the height of its popularity and frenzy, had swept both Houses of Congress, it was the veto of Grant, which, single and alone, overthrew expansion and cleared the way for specie resumption. To him, immeasurably more than to any other man, is due the fact that every paper dollar is at last as good as gold.

With him as our leader we shall have no defensive campaign. No! We shall have nothing to explain away. We shall have no apologies to make. The shafts and the arrows have all been aimed at him, and they lie broken and harmless at his feet.

Life, liberty and property will find a safeguard in him. . When he said of the colored men in Florida, “Wherever I am, they may come also" when he so said, he meant that, had he the power, the poor dwellers in the cabins of the South should no longer be driven in terror from the homes of their childhood, and the graves of their murdered dead. When he refused to see Dennis Kearney in California, he meant that communism, lawlessness and disorder, although it might stalk high-headed and dictate law to a whole city, would always find a foe in him. He meant that, popular or unpopular, he would hew to the line of right, let them fly where they may.

His integrity, his common sense, his courage, his unequalled experience, are the qualities offered to his country. The only argument, the only one that the wit of man or the stress of politics has devised, is one which would dumbfound Solomon, because he thought there was nothing new under the sun. Having tried Grant twice and found him faithful, we are told that we must not, even after an interval of years, trust him again. My countrymen ! my countrymen! what stultification does not such a fallacy involve! Is this an electioneering juggle, or is it hypocrisy's masquerade ? There is no field of human activity, responsibility, or reason in which rational beings object to an agent because he has been weighed in the balance and not found wanting. There is, I say, no department of human reason in which sane men reject an agent because he has had experience, making him exceptionally competent and fit. From the man who shoes your horse, to the lawyer who tries your cause, the officer who manages your railway or your mill, the doctor into whose hands you give your life, or the minister who seeks to save your soul, what man do you reject because by his works you have known him and found him faithful and fit? What makes the Presidential office an exception to all things else in the common sense to be applied to selecting its incumbent? Who dares—who dares to put

fetters on that free choice and judgment which is the birthright of the American people? Can it be said that Grant has used official power and place to perpetuate his term ? He has no place, and official power has not been used for him. Without patronage and without emissaries, without committees, without bureaus, without telegraph wires running from his house to this Convention, or running from his house anywhere else, this man is the candidate whose friends have never threatened to bolt unless this Convention did as they said. He is a Republican who never wavers. He and his friends stand by the creed and the candidates of the Republican party. They hold the rightful rule of the majority as the very essence of their faith, and they mean to uphold that faith against not only the common enemy, but against the charlatans, jayhawkers, tramps and guerrillas—the men who deploy between the lines, and forage now on one side and then on the other. This Convention is master of a supreme opportunity. It can name the next President. It can make sure of his election. It can make sure not only of his election, but of his certain and peaceful inauguration. More than all, it can break that power which dominates and mildews the South. It can overthrow an organization whose very exist. ence is a standing protest against progress.

The purpose of the Democratic party is spoils.

Its very hope of existence is a solid South. Its success is a menace to order and prosperity. I say this Convention can overthrow that power. It can dissolve and emancipate a solid South. It can speed the nation in a career of grandeur eclipsing all past achievements.

Gentlemen, we have only to listen above the din and look beyond the dust of an hour to behold the Republican party advancing with its ensigns resplendent with illustrious achievements, marching to certain and lasting victory with its greatest Marshal at its head.

The Governor's Last Levee.

SARA BEAUMONT KENNEDY. Copyrighted, 1899, by The Curtis Publishing Company. Reprinted by courtesy of The Ladies' Home Journal.

THOMAS RUFFIN had been found guilty of treason against his serene and gracious majesty across the sea, King George the Third, and the full penalty of the law was to be exacted. His lawyer, Master Gaston, was at his wit's end for his client, but managed to delay the matter, hoping for official clemency. Thomas Ruffin was engaged to Priscilla Spaight but Anise Burgwyn had loved him from her childhood.

The morning of the Governor's ball, Betty