omburg he seemed to care for others' opinions about the proper
course for him to take; and the substance of that which I had to
say--and he seemed to think me in a way representative--was that he
alone must decide for himself, as he only knew all the circumstances
and elements that must be considered in a decision. Once we walked
the main street of the town in the night--and it is then a very lonely
place, for it is the fashion to get up in the morning at six o'clock,
and take the waters and the music--and that time I was impressed, and
the impression abided, that the inner conviction of Mr. Blaine was he
had not the vitality to safely take the Presidency if he held it in
his hand; that he believed the office would wear him out--that it was
a place of dealing with persons who would worry away his existence;
that he felt he could not endure the wear and tear and pressure of
the first position, and preferred the Secretaryship of State, with
the hope of going on with his South American policy, which he had
developed in Garfield's time, brief as that was; and I conjectured
that all this had been in his mind when he wanted Sherman and Lincoln
to be the ticket in 1884. And it occurred to me with so much force as
the logic of many things he said, that I accepted it as true, and was
reminded of his weary exclamation once of a good friend whose moods
were changeable: "Now that he is right, stay with him. He takes the
health out of me with his uncertainties."

The Secretaryship of State he cared for; in that office the world was
all before him, and he was fully himself, and was not fretted by
a perpetual procession of favor-seekers. The argument his urgent
admirers used with him was that it would be easier to make up his mind
than to convince a President, and that as the Chief of State he could
throw the work on the Cabinet; but he was not satisfied. The Florence
letter to me seemed familiar, for it was a reminder of Homburg, and
its sincerity was in all the lines and between the lines; and it was
addressed to a friend in Pittsburg, that it might not be suppressed in
New York. He had very close and influential friends who did not divine
his true attitude, or would not admit that they had, and insisted that
he was really well and strong and tough, better than he had been, and
that he should not be humored in his fancy that he was an invalid.
This feeling continued even to 1892, though he had been meantime
painfully broken by a pro