t the infamy of politics was broad and wide,
and universal. Even the record of Andrew Johnson, our seventeenth
President, was exhumed. He was charged with conspiracy against the
United States Government. Because he came from a border State, where
loyalty was more difficult than in the Northern States, he was accused
of making a nefarious attack against our Government. I did not accept
these charges. They were freighted with political purpose. I said then,
in order to prove General Grant a good man, it was not necessary to try
and prove that Johnson was a bad one. The President from Tennessee left
no sons to vindicate his name. I never saw President Johnson but once,
but I refused to believe these attacks upon him. They were an
unwarranted persecution of the sacred memory of the dead. No man who has
been eminently useful has escaped being eminently cursed.

At our local elections in Brooklyn, in the autumn of 1885, three
candidates for mayor were nominated. They were all exceptionally good
men. Two of them were personal friends of mine, General Catlin and Dr.
Funk. Catlin had twice been brevetted for gallantry in the Civil War,
and Dr. Funk was on the prohibition ticket, because he had represented
prohibition all his life. Mr. Woodward, the third candidate, I did not
know, but he was a strict Methodist, and that was recommendation enough.
But there were pleasanter matters to think about than politics.

In November of this year, there appeared, at the Horticultural Hall in
New York, a wonderful floral stranger from China--the chrysanthemum.
Thousands of people paid to go and see these constellations of beauty.
It was a new plant to us then, and we went mad about it in true American
fashion. To walk among these flowers was like crossing a corner of
heaven. It became a mania of the times, almost like the tulip mania of
Holland in the 17th century. People who had voted that the Chinese must
go, voted that the Chinese chrysanthemum could stay. The rose was
forgotten for the time being, and the violets, and the carnations, and
the lily of the valley. In America we were still the children of the
world, delighted with everything that was new and beautiful.

In Europe, the war dance of nations continued. In the twenty-two years
preceding the year 1820 Christendom had paid ten billions of dollars for
battles. The exorbitant taxes of Great Britain and the United States
were results of war. There was a great wave of Gospel effort i