hich might be inconvenient in the remote future.

I think Evarts failed to appreciate his own political strength.
He was in the early part of his life devoted to Mr. Webster,
for whom he had great reverence, and later to Mr. Seward.
He sometimes, I think, failed to take wholly serious views
of political conditions, so far as they affected him personally.
I do not think he ever knew the hold he had upon the respect
of the country, or upon the affection of the men with whom
he was brought into intimate association in public life, and
at the Bar. He was very fond of his friends, classmates and
kindred, and of his college.

After the defeat of the Republican Party in 1884 he was chosen
Senator from the State of New York. He had been candidate
for the Senate in 1861, to succeed Mr. Seward. His competitor
was Horace Greeley. Some of Mr. Evarts's friends thought
that the old supporters of Mr. Seward, and perhaps Mr. Seward
himself, did not stand by him as the unfailing and powerful
support of Seward would have led men to expect. But when
he came into public life in 1885, and took his seat as a Senator
from the great State of New York, men looked to him to be
the great leader in restoring the broken ranks of the Republican
Party. I think it would have been easy to make him the Republican
candidate, and to elect him to the Presidency in 1888, if
he had been willing to take that position himself. But he
did not in the Senate, or in the counsels of the party, take
or attempt to take the leadership for which he was fitted.

He was invited in the spring or early summer of 1885 to address
a political club in Boston. The whole country listened eagerly
to see what counsel the great Senator and the great Constitutional
lawyer, and great orator, had to give to his party associates
and to the people in that momentous time. But he contented
himself with making a bright and witty speech. The club was
known as the Middlesex Club, though it had its meetings in
Boston. He gave a humorous description of the feelings of
the Middlesex man when he went over to Boston, and those of
the Boston man when he went over to Middlesex; and told one
or two stories of his early days in Boston, where he was born.
That was all. I felt as I listened as though a pail of ice-
water had been poured down my spine.

But modesty and disinterestedness are qualities that are
so infrequent among public men that we may well pardon this
bright and deli