as raised up by
God to save it; else why the militia colonel of Virginia and the rail
splitter of Illinois, for no reason that was obvious at the time, before
all other men? God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. The
star of the sublime destiny that hung over the manager of our blessed
Savior hung over the cradle of our blessed Union.

Thus far it has weathered each historic danger which has gone before to
mark the decline and fall of nations; the struggle for existence; the
foreign invasion; the internecine strife; the disputed succession;
religious bigotry and racial conflict. One other peril confronts
it--the demoralization of wealth and luxury; too great prosperity; the
concentration and the abuse of power. Shall we survive the lures with
which the spirit of evil, playing upon our self-love, seeks to trip
our wayward footsteps, purse-pride and party spirit, mistaken zeal and
perverted religion, fanaticism seeking to abridge liberty and liberty
running to license, greed masquerading as a patriot and ambition making
a commodity of glory--or under the process of a divine evolution shall
we be able to mount and ride the waves which swallowed the tribes of
Israel, which engulfed the phalanxes of Greece and the legions of Rome,
and which still beat the sides and sweep the decks of Europe?

The one-party power we have escaped; the one-man power we have escaped.
The stars in their courses fight for us; the virtue and intelligence of
the people are still watchful and alert. Truth is mightier than
ever, and justice, mounting guard even in the Hall of Statues, walks
everywhere the battlements of freedom!

Chapter the Twentieth

The Real Grover Cleveland--Two Clevelands Before and After Marriage--A
Correspondence and a Break of Personal Relations

I

There were, as I have said, two Grover Clevelands--before and after
marriage--and, it might be added, between his defeat in 1888 and his
election in 1892. He was so sure of his election in 1888 that he could
not be induced to see the danger of the situation in his own State
of New York, where David Bennett Hill, who had succeeded him in the
governorship, was a candidate for reelection, and whom he personally
detested, had become the ruling party force. He lost the State, and
with it the election, while Hill won, and thereby arose an ugly faction
fight.

I did not believe as the quadrennial period approached in 1892 that
Mr. Cleveland coul