t Mr. Cleveland was to be President, he could not get his
own legislature to ratify his nomination. His hands were tied, and his
idolaters were only waiting for his term of office to expire. The
politicians lied about him. Because as Governor of New York he could not
give all the office-seekers places, he was, in a few months, executed by
his political friends, and the millennium was postponed that politics
might have time to find someone else to be lifted up--and in turn hurled
into oblivion.

That the politics of our country might serve a wider purpose, a great
agitation among the newspapers began. The price of the great dailies
came down from four to three cents, and from three to two cents. In a
week it looked as though they would all be down to one cent. I expected
to see them delivered free, with a bonus given for the favour of taking
them at all. It was not a pleasant outlook, this deluge of printed
matter, cheapened in every way, by cheaper labour, cheaper substance,
and cheaper grammar. It was a plan that enlarged the scope of influence
over what was arrogantly claimed as editorial territory--public opinion.
Public opinion is sound enough, so long as it is not taken too seriously
in the newspapers.

The difference between a man as his antagonists depict him, and as he
really is in his own character, may be as wide as the ocean. I was
particularly impressed with this fact when I met the Rev. Dr. Ewer of
New York, who had been accused of being disputatious and arrogant. Truth
was, he was a master in the art of religious defence, wielding a
scimitar of sharp edge. I never met a man with more of the childlike,
the affable, and the self-sacrificing qualities than Dr. Ewer had.

He was an honest man in the highest sense, with a never-varying purity
of purpose. Dr. Ewer died in the fall of 1883.

I began to feel that in the local management of our own big city there
was an uplift, when two such sterling young men as James W. Ridgeway,
and Joseph C. Hendrix, were nominated for District Attorney. They were
merely technical opponents, but were united in the cause of reform and
honest administration against our criminal population. We were fortunate
in the degree of promise there was, in having a choice of such competent
nominees. But it was a period of historical jubilee in our country, this
fall of 1883.

We were celebrating centennials everywhere, even at Harvard. It seemed
to be about a hundred years back since a