"What have they been saying?" he shot back. "Senator Dawes denounced you as not having a record to inspire confidence in your reform professions.'

"Young man, you can take out your notebook. Tell Senator Dawes from me that I never received any Credit Mobilier stock, and if I had, I shouldn't have lied about it. Mr. Dawes was ready enough to have me support him for senator."

The new collector at Boston being mentioned, General Butler savagely commented, "It would have been better not to have put a bankrupt tailor into the customhouse", for Mr. Beard had been in the clothing business. Of President Hayes he patronizingly said, "I think he is a politician of the village school, who is willing to do anything to maintain the party ascendance that any old politician would do."

Much wiser was General Butler in giving his opinion of the Republican candidate for governor. "Mr. Talbot is a good man, a man of convictions, who would do right if he could. But the State House ring won't let him." Being asked if he had any "bricks" in store for the Republican nominees, as some of his followers intimated, the general replied, "If I catch myself saying a word against Thomas Talbot I shall consider myself showing signs of insanity. But the election is not going to turn on the question of men; it is what they represent." General Butler said he considered himself the candidate of the

Democratic party, and regarded the coming Boston Democratic convention as "no more important than any other meeting of private gentlemen." He expected "the people" to care for his candidacy; "I have a workshop on every farm. I have no doubt there are many people working for me on this train. They are my campaign orators."

All in all General Butler yielded a "rattling" interview, and as I thanked him he said, "Young man, I am going out to Dayton, Ohio, where I am governor of the Soldiers' Home. Mail me a copy of what you write so I can see if you are to be trusted." As I passed to the back of the car Tilly Haynes, who had watched the proceedings, said, “That was the cheekiest thing I ever saw done. You bluffed it through all right." Such praise from Barnum's friend and one fully acquainted with the methods of the theatrical business gave the young newspaper worker reassurance he needed.

This Butler episode threw light upon a remarkable personality, one which had been under discussion ever since before the Civil War. He was never uninteresting, and opinion was always sharply divided over him. What was the secret of Butler's power? Short and stout he was, and one of his eyelids drooped so as to make him look more like a pirate than a statesman. But he was dramatic and audacious beyond other men. He ever had an eye to effect, and delivered important political speeches in a dress suit with a rose in the buttonhole of his coat. He was "smart" in the Yankee sense. Few got the better of him in thrust and repartee. When

he was in anger men disliked to face him, - as when James G. Blaine, speaker of the National House, with Butler waiting in the corridor before his door to make sure of a promised committee appointment, climbed out of a rear window of the Speaker's room and so got into the hall of the House "by some other way" to make announcement of his committees. After that, Butler, balked of his desire, could only nurse his grievance and nag the presiding officer.

But the man had sway over his fellows. He took care of his camp followers. From time to time good men got into his train. Williams College, conservative and orthodox, gave him the degree of LL.D. in 1864, but Harvard, where the governing body knew him better, always withheld that honor. To many Butler represented challenge to constituted authority. The disaffected - and criminals going before the court - admired and made use of him. But Butler did not wear well, as his career demonstrated all along its tortuous way.

It took six columns of the Republican to recount the doings of that big Democratic night and day in Worcester, together with a forecast of what the Republicans would do at their gathering next day. There was color in the long story, but not superfluity of words. The following day four columns were written about the Republican convention. This volume of copy had to be garnered and written out word by word in long hand. Dictation, the typewriter and telephone had not yet arrived to spare one's hand and brain. Happily such excessive

strain was not an everyday matter. But there was always a satisfying exhilaration about newspaper exploitations. I once asked the elder Samuel Bowles, why a certain man who had secured release from the stress and confinement of newspaper work had gone back to the old task when there was no urgency of a financial sort. "It is like taking whisky," was the reply; "when one gets the habit he feels that he must have the excitement it produces." Workers on newspapers know all about that thrill.

XXV

TALBOT'S FRUITFUL ADMINISTRATION

INTO the campaign for the election of Talbot the Republican put its heart. Massachusetts needed a reformer capable of achieving results such as Springfield had in Daniel L. Harris. Under the senior Bowles the paper had established leadership in state politics, and his young men sought to maintain the tradition. Study of the situation made it clear that unless the Republican party cut loose from Governor Rice and other aristocratic wholesale apologists for the past, it would meet defeat. Thomas Talbot had come up from plain things, understood the stresses of life through experience, and he had insisted since 1868, when he served in the Executive Council and urged his view upon Governor Bullock, that the State must be brought back to a

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peace basis.' He was elected by a plurality of 25,290 over Butler. Talbot received 134,725 votes, Butler 109,435, Judge Abbott 10,162 and Miner 1913. Reverend Doctor Miner was the prohibition candidate. Patrick A. Collins once said of this excellent Universalist divine that Doctor Miner would be a fine man "if he would only let rum alone", - a saying often plagiarized since.

Long before the convention I came into relations with Governor Talbot. As I desired more intimate