ain
words. They were addressed as from one friend to another, as from one
Democrat to another. If you entertain the idea that this is a false view
of our relative positions, and that your eminence lifts you above both
comradeship and counsels, I have nothing to say except to regret that,
in underestimating your breadth of character I exposed myself too
contumely.

You do, indeed, ride a wave of fortune and favor. You are quite beyond
the reach of insult, real or fancied. You could well afford to be more
tolerant.

In answer to the ignorance of my service to the Democratic party, which
you are at such pains to indicate--and, particularly, with reference to
the sectional issue and the issue of tariff reform--I might, if I
wanted to be unamiable, suggest to you a more attentive perusal of the
proceedings of the three national conventions which nominated you for
President.

But I purpose nothing of the sort. In the last five national conventions
my efforts were decisive in framing the platform of the party. In
each of them I closed the debate, moved the previous question and was
sustained by the convention. In all of them, except the last, I was a
maker, not a smasher. Touching what happened at Chicago, the present
year, I had a right, in common with good Democrats, to be anxious;
and out of that sense of anxiety alone I wrote you. I am sorry that my
temerity was deemed by you intrusive and, entering a respectful protest
against a ban which I cannot believe to be deserved by me, and assuring
you that I shall not again trouble you in that way, I am, your obedient
servant,

HENRY WATTERSON.

The Hon. Grover Cleveland.

V

This ended my personal relations with Mr. Cleveland. Thereafter we
did not speak as we passed by. He was a hard man to get on with.
Overcredulous, though by no means excessive, in his likes, very
tenacious in his dislikes, suspicious withal, he grew during his second
term in the White House, exceedingly "high and mighty," suggesting
somewhat the "stuffed prophet," of Mr. Dana's relentless lambasting and
verifying my insistence that he posed rather as an idol to be worshiped,
than a leader to be trusted and loved. He was in truth a strong man,
who, sufficiently mindful of his limitations in the beginning, grew by
unexampled and continued success overconfident and overconscious in his
own conceit. He had a real desire to serve the country. But he was apt
to think that he alone could effectivel