ago. That very
week I received a letter from Mrs. Jefferson Davis thanking
me for what I had done to save her from privation in her old
age; a telegram from the authorities of William and Mary College,
thanking me for my service in accomplishing the rebuilding
of the College; and a personal call from Judge Howell E. Jackson,
of Tennessee, a Southern Democrat and Confederate, thanking
me for what I had done toward procuring his appointment as
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
These things all happened in the same year, I believe, certainly
in a very short time after I had done what I could to induce
the reappointment of General Corse and the selection of Judge
Putnam.

I freely admit that I have believed with all my heart and
soul in the principles of the Republican Party. But I think
there can be found few members of that party who have been
less controlled in their public actions by violent partisanship
than I have.

CHAPTER XXXI
SATURDAY CLUB

In 1877, about the time of my election to the Senate, I was
chosen a member of the famous Saturday Club. I always attended
the meetings when I could be in Boston until after the death
of my brother, when every man who was a member when I was
chosen was dead, except Mr. Norton and Judge Gray and the
younger Agassiz and Mr. Howells, and all of them had ceased
to be constant attendants.

They used to meet at the Parker House in Boston once a month.
Each member was at liberty to bring a guest.

I suppose there was never a merely social club with so many
famous men in it or another where the conversation was more
delightful since that to which Johnson and Burke and Goldsmith
and Garrick and Reynolds belonged. There was plenty of sparkling
wit and repartee and plenty of serious talk from philosophers
and men of letters and science. Agassiz and Jeffries Wyman
would sometimes debate Darwin's theory of evolution, which
Darwin had confided to Asa Gray, another member, long before
he made it known to the public. Holmes and Lowell contributed
their wit, and Judge Hoar, whom Lowell declared the most brilliant
man in conversation he had ever known, his shrewd Yankee sense
and his marvellous store of anecdote. Some of the greatest
members, notably Emerson and Longfellow and Whittier, were
in general quite silent. But it was worth going a thousand
miles if but to see one of them, or to hear the tones of his
voice.

In the beginning I suspected