time is now not his own but the Republic's, whose most
honoured servant he is. I count it among the most inspiring experiences
in my life that I had the privilege, at the suggestion of one of his
personal friends, of talking with him one morning about the complete
reuniting of the two great sections of our Republic by his election. I
told him, and I know I told him the truth, when I said that every young
man in the Southern States who, without an opportunity to share either
the glory or the defeat of the late Confederacy, had in spite of himself
suffered the disadvantages of the poverty and oppression that followed
war, took new hope for the full and speedy realization of a complete
union, of unparalleled prosperity and of broad thinking and noble living
from his elevation to the Presidency. I told him that the men of North
Carolina were not only patriotic but ambitious as well; and that they
were Democrats and proud citizens of the State and the Republic not
because they wanted offices or favours, but because they loved freedom
and wished the land that had been impoverished by war to regain more
than it had lost. 'I have not called, Mr. President, to ask for an
office for myself or for anybody else,' I remarked; 'but to have the
pleasure of expressing my gratification, as a citizen of North Carolina,
at the complete change in political methods and morals that I believe
will date from your Administration.' He answered that he was glad to
see all men who came in such a spirit and did not come to
beg--especially young men of the South of to-day; and he talked and
encouraged me to talk freely as if he had been as small a man as I am,
or I as great a man as he is.

"From that day to this it has been my business to watch every public act
that he does, to read every public word he speaks, and it has been a
pleasure and a benefit to me (like the benefit that a man gets from
reading a great history--for he is making a great history) to study the
progress of his Administration; and at every step he seems to me to
warrant the trust that the great Democratic party put in him."

The period to which Page refers in this letter represented the time when
he was making a serious and harassing attempt to establish himself in
his chosen profession in his native state. He went south for a short
visit after resigning his place on the New York _World_, and several
admirers in Raleigh persuaded him to found a new paper, which should
devote