ay noticed a carriage passing with two or three
people in it. My attention was startled by the appearance in that
carriage of what seemed a case of extreme invalidism. The man seemed
somewhat bolstered up. My sympathies were immediately aroused, and I
said to my son, "Look at that sick man riding yonder." When the carriage
came nearer to us, my son said, "That is Mr. Blaine." Looking closely at
the carriage I found that this was so. He had in two hours swung from
vigour to exhaustion, from the look of a man good for twenty years of
successful work to a man who seemed to be taking his last ride. He
simply looked as he felt on both occasions. We had seen the two Blaines.

How much more just we would be in our judgment of men if we realised
that a man may be honestly two different men, and how this theory would
explain that which in every man of high organisation seems sometimes to
be contradictory! Aye, within five minutes some of us with mercurial
natures can remember to have been two entirely different men in two
entirely different worlds. Something said to us cheering or depressing;
some tidings announced, glad or sad; some great kindness done for us, or
some meanness practised on us have changed the zone, the pulsation, the
physiognomy, the physical, the mental, the spiritual condition, and we
become no more what we were than summer is winter, or midnoon is
midnight, or frosts are flowers.

The air was full of political clamour and strife in the election of
1884. Never in this country was there a greater temptation to political
fraud, because, after four month's battle, the counting of the ballots
revealed almost a tie. I urged self-control among men who were angry and
men who were bitter. The enemies of Mr. Blaine were not necessarily the
friends of Mr. Cleveland. The enemies of Mr. Cleveland were bitter, but
they were afraid of Mr. Blaine; for he was a giant intellectually,
practically, physically, and he stood in the centre of a national arena
of politics, prepared to meet all challenge. Mr. Cleveland never really
opposed him. He faced him on party issues, not as an individual
antagonist. The excitement was intense during the suspense that followed
the counting of the ballots, and Mr. Cleveland went into the White House
amidst a roar of public opinion so confused and so vicious that there
was no certainty of ultimate order in the country. In after years I
enjoyed his confidence and friendship, and I learned to appr