the men--Democrats as well as Republicans--who were preying upon the
substance of the people.

The story of the two years that followed relates to investigations that
investigated, to prosecutions that convicted, to the overhauling of
popular censorship, to reduced estimates and lower taxes.

The campaign for the Presidential nomination began as early as the
autumn of 1875. The Southern end of it was easy enough. A committee of
Southerners residing in New York was formed. Never a leading Southern
man came to town who was not "seen." If of enough importance he was
taken to No. 15 Gramercy Park. Mr. Tilden measured to the Southern
standard of the gentleman in politics. He impressed the disfranchised
Southern leaders as a statesman of the old order and altogether after
their own ideas of what a President ought to be.

The South came to St. Louis, the seat of the National Convention,
represented by its foremost citizens, and almost a unit for the Governor
of New York. The main opposition sprang from Tammany Hall, of which John
Kelly was then the chief. Its very extravagance proved an advantage to
Tilden.

Two days before the meeting of the convention I sent this message to Mr.
Tilden: "Tell Blackstone"--his favorite riding horse--"that he wins in a
walk."

The anti-Tilden men put up the Hon. S.S.--"Sunset"--Cox for temporary
chairman. It was a clever move. Mr. Cox, though sure for Tammany, was
popular everywhere and especially at the South. His backers thought that
with him they could count a majority of the National Committee.

The night before the assembling Mr. Tilden's two or three leading
friends on the committee came to me and said: "We can elect you chairman
over Cox, but no one else."

I demurred at once. "I don't know one rule of parliamentary law from
another," I said.

"We will have the best parliamentarian on the continent right by you all
the time," they said.

"I can't see to recognize a man on the floor of the convention," I said.

"We'll have a dozen men at hand to tell you," they replied. So it was
arranged, and thus at the last moment I was chosen.

I had barely time to write the required keynote speech, but not enough
to commit it to memory; nor sight to read it, even had I been willing
to adopt that mode of delivery. It would not do to trust to
extemporization. A friend, Col. J. Stoddard Johnston, who was familiar
with my penmanship, came to the rescue. Concealing my manuscript behind
his h