e North would not like
that we should go out of our way to help the widow of Jefferson
Davis. I had not told my story, nor stated my reasons. I
said quite angrily: "Well, Mr. President, if you will not
hear me, I will stop now." I made my bow and withdrew from
the circle. The President called after me: "Mr. Hoar, I
will hear you." Whereupon I told my story. But there was
no sign of relenting upon his grim countenance. I went back
to my seat with General Gordon, who had accompanied me. He
tore off a piece of an order of exercises for the Inauguration,
and handed it to a page, telling him to give it to a friend
of Mrs. Davis, who was outside. He had written on it: "He
won't sign the bill." Just after the page had departed, the
Attorney-General came up and told us that the President had
signed the bill. General Gordon called back the page. I
asked him to give me the torn fragment of the order of exercises,
on which he had written the message, which I have kept as
a memorial of the transaction, and of him. Perhaps I may
be pardoned for adding that General Gordon came to me just
afterward with great emotion, and said, "Hoar, save my allegiance
to the Democratic Party, I want you to know that you own me."

These stories may seem trifling. But such trifles sometimes
give an idea of the character of men like Harrison more than
their greater actions.

Benjamin Harrison many times thought rashly and spoke hastily.
But he acted always, so far as I knew, under the impulse of
a warm, kind and brave heart, and of a great and wise intellect.

Some of my Southern brethren have spoken of me with undeserved
kindness in recent years, and they like to say that my heart
has softened within the last few years, and that I have become
more tolerant and less harsh and bigoted than I was of old.
Some Northern papers have taken the same view. What I did
to secure the rebuilding of the William and Mary building,
and to establish the policy of restoring at National cost
all the property of institutions of education, charity and
religion destroyed at the South, both of which were in the
beginning opposed by the almost unanimous sentiment of my
party associates, was done in the first and second terms of
my service in the House of Representatives, now thirty-five
years ago. A Boston newspaper published a series of articles
denouncing me as a bitter partisan and a bigoted and intolerant
hater of the people of the South, some years