is choice of the chief missions, expecting him to choose the
English. Remembering Irving in Spain, Bancroft in Germany, Motley in
England, and Marsh in Italy, it was a great temptation. But Curtis,
appreciating his "civic duty," remained at home, and now took this
occasion to voice his support of the Executive who had honoured
him.[1574]

[Footnote 1573: New York _Tribune_, September 27.]

[Footnote 1574: Curtis declined chiefly from the motive ascribed in
Lowell's lines:

"At courts, in senates, who so fit to serve?
And both invited, but you would not swerve,
All meaner prizes waiving that you might
In civic duty spend your heat and light,
Unpaid, untrammelled, with a sweet disdain.
Refusing posts men grovel to attain."
--_Lowell's Poems_, Vol. 4, pp. 138-139.]

His speech, pitched in an exalted key, sparkled with patriotic
utterances and eloquent periods, with an occasional keen allusion to
Conkling. He skilfully contrasted the majority's demand for harmony
with Platt's reference to Evarts as a "demagogue" and to civil service
reform as a "nauseating shibboleth." He declared it would shake the
confidence of the country in the party if, after announcing its
principles, it failed to commend the agent who was carrying them out.
Approval of details was unnecessary. Republicans did not endorse
Lincoln's methods, but they upheld him until the great work of the
martyr was done. In the same spirit they ought to support President
Hayes, who, in obedience to many State and two or three National
conventions, had taken up the war against abuses of the civil service.
If the convention did not concur in all his acts, it should show the
Democratic party that Republicans know what they want and the man by
whom to secure such results.

In speaking of abuses in the civil service he told the story of
Lincoln looking under the bed before retiring to see if a
distinguished senator was waiting to get an office,[1575] referred to
the efforts of Federal officials to defeat his own election to the
convention, and declared that the President, by his order, intended
that a delegate like himself, having only one vote, should not meet
another with one hundred votes in his pocket obtained by means of
political patronage. Instead of the order invading one's rights it was
intended to restore them to the great body of the Republicans of New
York, who now "refuse to enter a convention to be met--not by brains,
no