s
really a very able speaker for a popular American audience, and will be
of immense service if rightly managed. But you must get some steady,
sensible man to go with him and keep him in hand and regulate expenses,
&c."

It was done. After the election I conversed with the one who had been
the bear-leader, and he said--

"It was an immense success. Train made thousands of votes, and was a
most effective speaker. His mania for speaking was incredible. One day,
after addressing two or three audiences at different towns, we stopped at
another to dine. While waiting for the soup, I heard a voice as of a
public speaker, and looking out, saw Train standing on a load of hay,
addressing a thousand admiring auditors."

There are always many men who claim to have carried every Presidential
election--the late Mr. Guiteau was one of these geniuses--but it is also
true that there are many who would by _not_ working have produced very
great changes. Forney was a mighty wire-puller, if not exactly before
the Lord, at least before the elections, and he opined that I had secured
the success. There were _certainly_ other men--_e.g._, Peacock, who
influenced as many votes as the _Weekly Press_, and George Francis
Train--without whose aid Pennsylvania and Grant's election would have
been lost, but it is something to have been one of the few who did it.

When General Grant came in, he resolved to have nothing to do with
"corrupt old politicians," even though they had done him the greatest
service. So he took up with a lot of doubly corrupt young ones, who were
only inferior to the veterans in ability. Colonel Forney was snubbed
cruelly, in order to rob him. Whatever he had done wrongly, he had done
his _work_ rightly, and if Grant intended to throw his politicians
overboard, he should have informed them of it before availing himself of
their services. His conduct was like that of the old lady who got a man
to saw three cords of wood for her, and then refused to pay him because
he had been divorced.

I had never in my life asked for an office from anybody. Mr. Charles A.
Dana once said that the work I did for the Republican party on _Vanity
Fair_ alone was worth a foreign mission, and that was a mere trifle to
what I did with the _Continental Magazine_, my pamphlet, &c. When Grant
was President, I petitioned that a little consulate worth $1,000 (200
pounds) might be given to a poor Episcopal clergyman, but a man
accustome