he evidently preferred to wear the acrid tendencies of his
character on the outside--which indicated that there was behind his
cynicism a rich fund of human kindness and sympathy. And this was
strongly confirmed by his neighbors at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, his
home, where on one of my campaigning tours I once spent a day and a
night. With them, even with many of his political opponents, "old
Thad," as they called him, appeared to be eminently popular. They had no
end of stories to tell about the protection he had given to fugitive
slaves, sometimes at much risk and sacrifice to himself, and of the many
benefactions he had bestowed with a lavish hand upon the widows and
orphans and other persons in need, and of his generous fidelity to his
friends. They did not, indeed, revere him as a model of virtue, but of
the occasional lapses of his bachelor life from correct moral standards,
which seemed to be well known and freely talked about, they spoke with
affectionate lenity of judgment.

When I saw him again in Washington at the opening of the Thirty-ninth
Congress, in December, 1865, he looked very much aged since our last
meeting, and infirm in health. In repose his face was like a death-mask,
and he was carried in a chair to his seat in the House by two stalwart
young negroes. There is good authority for the story that once when they
had set him down, he said to them, with his grim humor: "Thank you, my
good fellows. What shall I do when you are dead and gone?" But his eyes
glowed from under his bushy brows with the old keen sparkle, and his
mind was as alert as ever. It may be that his age--he was then
seventy-four--and his physical infirmities, admonishing him that at best
he would have only a few years more to live, served to inspire him with
an impatient craving and a fierce determination to make the best of his
time, and thus to intensify the activity of his mental energies. To
compass the abolition of slavery had been the passion of his life. He
had hailed the Civil War as the great opportunity. He had never been
quite satisfied with Lincoln, whose policy seemed to him too dilatory.
He demanded quick, sharp, and decisive blows.

[Illustration: WILLIAM PITT FESSENDEN

HEAD OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE ON RECONSTRUCTION, WHICH WAS DENOUNCED BY
PRESIDENT JOHNSON AS AN "IRRESPONSIBLE CENTRAL DIRECTORY"]

Now that the abolition of slavery was actually decreed, he saw President
Johnson follow a policy which, in his view, th