colleague, Mr. Dawes,
who was a very earnest champion and friend of the Indians,
commented on the course of the Secretary in the Senate with
great severity; and he and the Secretary had an earnest controversy.

Mr. Schurz was a great favorite with our Independents and
Mugwumps, many of whom had, like him, left the Republican
Party in 1872, and some of whom had not returned to their
old allegiance. Mr. Schurz was invited to a public dinner
in Boston, at which President Eliot, Dr. James Freeman Clarke
and several eminent men of their way of thinking, took part.
They did not discuss the merits of the principal question
much, but the burden of their speech was eulogy of Mr. Schurz
as a great and good man, and severe condemnation of the character
of the miserable politicians who were supposed to be his critics
and opponents. There was a proposition for a call for a public
meeting on the other side to condemn the Secretary, and stand
by the Indians. In this call several very able and influential
men joined, including Governor Long. I advised very strongly
against holding the meeting. I was quite sure that, on the
one hand, neither Mr. Schurz nor the Administration was likely
to treat the Indians cruelly or unjustly again; and on the
other hand I was equally sure of the absolute sincerity and
humanity of the people who had found fault with his action.
A day or two, however, after the Schurz dinner, a reporter
of a prominent newspaper in Boston asked me for an interview
about the matter, to which I assented. He said: "Have you
seen the speeches of President Eliot and Dr. Clarke and Mr.
Codman at the Schurz banquet?" I said, "Yes." He asked me:
"What do you think of them?" I said: "Well, it is very natural
that these gentlemen should stand by Mr. Schurz, who has
been their leader and political associate. President Eliot's
speech reminds me of Baillie Nichol Jarvie when he stood
up for his kinsman, Rob Roy, in the Town Council of Glasgow
when some of the Baillie's enemies had cast in his teeth
his kinship with the famous outlaw. 'I tauld them,' said
the Baillie, 'that barring what Rob had dune again the law,
and that some three or four men had come to their deaths by
him, he was an honester man than stude on ony of their shanks.'"
This ended the incident, so far as I was concerned.

To draw an adequate portraiture of Charles Devens would require
the noble touch of the old masters of painting or the lofty
stroke