installed popular education, with common schools,
academies, and universities, much on the American plan. It has
adopted and installed every modern appliance developed by
electricity--telegraph, cable, telephone, etc.

While I was greatly tempted to reverse my decision and go,
my mother, who was in delicate health, felt that an absence so
long and at such distance would be fatal, and so on her account
I declined.

As I look back over the fifty years I can see plainly that four
years, and probably eight, in that mission would have severed
me entirely from all professional and business opportunities
at home, and I might have of necessity become a place holder
and a place seeker, with all its adventures and disappointments.

If I had seriously wanted an office and gone in pursuit of one,
my pathway would have had the usual difficulties, but fickle
fortune seemed determined to defeat my return to private life
by tempting offers. The collectorship of the port of New York
was vacant. It was a position of great political power because
of its patronage. There being no civil service, the appointments
were sufficiently numerous and important to largely control the
party in the State of New York, and its political influence reached
into other commonwealths. It was an office whose fees were
enormous, and the emoluments far larger than those of any position
in the country.

The party leaders had begun to doubt President Johnson, and they
wanted in the collectorship a man in whom they had entire
confidence, and so the governor and State officers, who were all
Republicans, the Republican members of the legislature, the State
committee, the two United States senators, and the Republican
delegation of New York in the House of Representatives unanimously
requested the president to appoint me.

President Johnson said to me: "No such recommendation and
indorsement has ever been presented to me before." However,
the breach between him and the party was widening, and he could
not come to a decision.

One day he suddenly sent for Senator Morgan, Henry J. Raymond,
Thurlow Weed, and the secretary of the treasury for a consultation.
He said to them: "I have decided to appoint Mr. Depew." The
appointment was made out by the secretary of the treasury, and the
president instructed him to send it to the Senate the next morning.
There was great rejoicing among the Republicans, as this seemed
to indicate a favorable turn in the pres