y and
comfort to me. His attitude toward Washington amused me. Assuming the
air of a Cook tourist, he methodically, and meticulously explored the
city, bringing to me each night a detailed report of what he had seen.
His concise, humorous and self-derisive comment was literature of a
most delightful quality, and I repeatedly urged him to write of the
capital as he talked of it to me, but he professed to have lost his
desire to write, and though I did not believe this, I hated to hear him
say it, for I valued his satiric humor and his wide knowledge of life.

He was amazed when I told him of my plan to start, in April, for the
Yukon, and in answer to his question I said, "I need an expedition of
heroic sort to complete my education, and to wash the library dust out
of my brain."

In response to a cordial note, I called upon John Hay one morning. He
received me in a little room off the main hall of his house, whose
spaciousness made him seem diminutive. He struck me as a dapper man,
noticeably, but not offensively, self-satisfied. His fine black beard
was streaked with white, but his complexion was youthfully clear. Though
undersized he was compact and sturdy, and his voice was crisp, musical,
and decisive.

We talked of Grant, of whom he had many pleasing personal recollections,
and when a little later we went for a walk, he grew curiously wistful
and spoke of his youth in the West and of the simple life of his early
days in Washington with tenderness. It appeared that wealth and honor
had not made him happy. Doubtless this was only a mood, for in parting
he reassumed his smiling official pose.

A few days later as I entered my Hotel I confronted the tall figure and
somber, introspective face of General Longstreet whom I had visited a
year before at his home in Gainesville, Georgia. We conversed a few
moments, then shook hands and parted, but as he passed into the street I
followed him. From the door-step I watched him slowly making his
cautious way through throngs of lesser men (who gave no special heed to
him), and as I thought of the days when his dread name was second only
to Lee's in the fear and admiration of the North, I marveled at the
change in twenty years. Now he was a deaf, hesitant old man, sorrowful
of aspect, poor, dim-eyed, neglected, and alone.

"Swift are the changes of life, and especially of American life," I made
note. "Most people think of Longstreet as a dead man, yet there he
walks, the gray