ere on the best possible
terms--we could never expect them to speak to us again.

.......................

I am reminded, now, of another matter. The day of the funeral I sat an
hour over a single drink and several cigars with Van Vliet and Sherman
and Senator Sherman; and among other things Gen. Sherman said, with
impatient scorn:

"The idea of all this nonsense about Grant not being able to stand rude
language and indelicate stories! Why Grant was full of humor, and full
of the appreciation of it. I have sat with him by the hour listening to
Jim Nye's yarns, and I reckon you know the style of Jim Nye's histories,
Clemens. It makes me sick--that newspaper nonsense. Grant was no
namby-pamby fool, he was a man--all over--rounded and complete."

I wish I had thought of it! I would have said to General Grant: "Put
the drunkenness in the Memoirs--and the repentance and reform. Trust the
people."

But I will wager there is not a hint in the book. He was sore, there. As
much of the book as I have read gives no hint, as far as I recollect.

The sick-room brought out the points of Gen. Grant's character--some of
them particularly, to wit:

His patience; his indestructible equability of temper; his exceeding
gentleness, kindness, forbearance, lovingness, charity; his loyalty:
to friends, to convictions, to promises, half-promises, infinitesimal
fractions and shadows of promises; (There was a requirement of him which
I considered an atrocity, an injustice, an outrage; I wanted to implore
him to repudiate it; Fred Grant said, "Save your labor, I know him; he
is in doubt as to whether he made that half-promise or not--and, he
will give the thing the benefit of the doubt; he will fulfill that
half-promise or kill himself trying;" Fred Grant was right--he did
fulfill it;) his aggravatingly trustful nature; his genuineness,
simplicity, modesty, diffidence, self-depreciation, poverty in the
quality of vanity-and, in no contradiction of this last, his simple
pleasure in the flowers and general ruck sent to him by Tom, Dick and
Harry from everywhere--a pleasure that suggested a perennial surprise
that he should be the object of so much fine attention--he was the most
lovable great child in the world; (I mentioned his loyalty: you remember
Harrison, the colored body-servant? the whole family hated him, but
that did not make any difference, the General always stood at his
back, wouldn't allow him to be scolded; al