cies pro and con continued to denounce or praise him, to
ridicule or extol his so-called Jeffersonian simplicity. It was at this
time that I encountered him--a tall, spare, capable and interesting
individual, who willingly took me into his confidence and explained all
that had hitherto befallen him. He was most interesting, really, a
figure to commemorate in this fashion.

In one of the rooms of his very humble home--a kind of office or den, in
a small house such as any clerk or working-man might occupy--was a
collection of clippings, laudatory, inquiring, and abusive, which would
have done credit to a candidate for the highest office in the land. One
would have judged by the scrap-books and envelopes stuffed to
overflowing with long newspaper articles and editorials that had been
cut from papers all over the country from Florida to Oregon, that his
every movement at this time and earlier was all-essential to the people.
Plainly, he had been watched, spied upon, and ignored by one class,
while being hailed, praised and invited by another. Magazine editors had
called upon him for contributions, journalists from the large cities had
sought him out to obtain his actual views, citizens' leagues in various
parts of the nation had invited him to come and speak, and yet he was
still a very young man in years, not over-intelligent politically or
philosophically, the ex-mayor of a small city, and the representative of
no great organization of any sort.

In his retirement he was now comforted, if one can be so comforted, by
these memories, still fresh in his mind and by the hope possibly for his
own future, as well as by a droll humor with which he was wont to select
the sharpest and most willful slur upon his unimpeachable conduct as an
offering to public curiosity.

"Do you really want to know what people think of me?" he said to me on
one occasion. "Well, here's something. Read this." And then he would
hand me a bunch of the bitterest attacks possible, attacks which
pictured him as a sly and treacherous enemy of the people--or worse yet
a bounding anarchistic ignoramus. Personally I could not help admiring
his stoic mood. It was superior to that of his detractors. Apparent
falsehoods did not anger him. Evident misunderstandings could not,
seemingly, disturb him.

"What do you expect?" he once said to me, after I had made a very
careful study of his career for a current magazine, which, curiously,
was never published. I was