d found that he had written for an hour or
more before breakfast. He said to me in explanation that if one
would take an hour before breakfast every morning and concentrate
his mind upon his subject, he would soon fill a library.

Mr. Raymond had been as a young man a reporter in the United States
Senate. He told me that, while at that time there was no system
of shorthand or stenography, he had devised a crude one for
himself, by which he could take down accurately any address of
a deliberate speaker.

Daniel Webster, the most famous orator our country has ever
produced, was very deliberate in his utterances. He soon discovered
Raymond's ability, and for several years he always had Raymond
with him, and once said to him: "Except for you, the world would
have very few of my speeches. Your reports have preserved them."

Mr. Raymond told me this story of Mr. Webster's remarkable memory.
Once he said to Mr. Webster: "You never use notes and apparently
have made no preparation, yet you are the only speaker I report
whose speeches are perfect in structure, language, and rhetoric.
How is this possible?" Webster replied: "It is my memory. I can
prepare a speech, revise and correct it in my memory, and then
deliver the corrected speech exactly as finished." I have known
most of the great orators of the world, but none had any approach
to a faculty like this, though several could repeat after second
reading the speech which they had prepared.

In 1862 I was candidate for re-election to the assembly. Political
conditions had so changed that they were almost reversed. The
enthusiasm of the war which had carried the Republicans into power
the year before had been succeeded by general unrest. Our armies
had been defeated, and industrial and commercial depression
was general.

The leader of the Democratic Party in the State was Dean Richmond.
He was one of those original men of great brain-power, force, and
character, knowledge of men, and executive ability, of which that
period had a number. From the humblest beginning he had worked
his way in politics to the leadership of his party, to the presidency
of the greatest corporation in the State, the New York Central
Railroad Company, and in his many and successful adventures
had accumulated a fortune. His foresight was almost a gift of
prophecy, and his judgment was rarely wrong. He believed that
the disasters in the field and the bad times at home could be
cha