Lapham ninety-two,
and Clarkson N. Potter, the new Democratic nominee, forty-two.[1770]

[Footnote 1767: "At a conference held on May 22, at the house of
Chester A. Arthur, No. 123 Lexington Avenue, the following persons
were present: Chester A. Arthur, Thomas C. Platt, Louis F. Payn,
Charles M. Denison, George H. Sharpe, John F. Smyth, A.B. Johnson, and
Roscoe Conkling. Each person was asked to pass judgment upon the
future course of the two Senators. Each one spoke in turn. The sense
of the meeting was that they should proceed to the State
capital."--A.R. Conkling, _Life of Conkling_, pp. 642-643.

"Payn warned both Conkling and Platt that they would be defeated.
Speaker Sharpe admonished Payn that he was wrong. Payn predicted that
while he and other friends were still battling for the organisation
Sharpe would desert them. Payn proved himself a prophet. Sharpe went
over to the opposition." Platt's Reminiscences.--_Cosmopolitan
Magazine_, April, 1909, p. 517.]

[Footnote 1768: New York papers of July 23.]

[Footnote 1769: New York _Tribune_, July 23.]

[Footnote 1770: The candidacy of John C. Jacobs had been the subject
of some criticism on the part of the Democrats because he was a member
of the Legislature, and on June 22, after the twenty-third ballot, he
withdrew. A caucus then substituted the name of Potter.]

For Conkling it was worse than defeat. The humiliation of having gone
to Albany, of being deserted by friend after friend, of enduring the
taunts of an inhospitable press, and, finally, of having his place
taken by one, who, in his opinion, had proven most faithless, was like
the torture of an unquenchable fire. Lord Randolph Churchill, after
his historic resignation as chancellor of the exchequer, declared that
he would not live it over again for a million a year. It is likewise a
matter of history that Senator Conkling never ceased to deplore his
mistake.[1771]

[Footnote 1771: Conkling at once resumed the practice of law in New
York City. The strain and exposure of making his way on foot through
the snowdrifts of the historic blizzard which visited that city in the
spring of 1888, resulted in an abscess in the inner ear, from which he
died on April 18. A bronze statue, erected in his memory, is located
in Madison Square.

"We have followed poor Conkling down to the gates of death and have
been truly sorry to see them close upon him. I have never heard your
father, in all the twenty-two years si