he administration with which I am
identified. The office to which I refer is that of special agent of
public lands. The salary is fifteen hundred a year and expenses. The
place is worth from two thousand to two thousand five hundred a year. I
shall not send you down South, where you may have some unpleasant and
embarrassing experiences, but I will send you out into the Black Hills,
where you will not be subjected to the slightest inconvenience and where
you will have very little to do, but make your reports and draw your
pay. If you say you will accept the appointment I shall give immediate
directions for the commission to be made out and you can take the oath
of office within the next twenty-four hours."

Of course I listened with close attention and with deep interest to what
the honorable Secretary said. When he had finished, I replied in about
these words:

"Mr. Secretary, I fully appreciate the friendly interest you manifest in
me, and I also appreciate what you are willing to do for me. If I have
rendered you any services in the past, I can assure you that they were
not rendered with the expectation that you would thereby be placed under
any obligations to me whatever. If I preferred you to others in your own
party it was because I believed in you the State would have the services
of one of its best, most brilliant and most eloquent representatives. It
was the good of the State and the best interests of its people rather
than the personal advancement of an individual that actuated me. The
exalted position now occupied by you I consider a confirmation of the
wisdom of my decision. But the fact cannot be overlooked that while you
are an able and influential leader in the Democratic party, I am, though
not so able nor so influential, a leader,--locally, if not
nationally,--in the Republican party. While I can neither hope nor
expect to reach that point of honor and distinction in the Republican
party that you have reached in the Democratic, I am just as proud of
the position I occupy to-day as a Republican, as it is possible for you
to be of yours as a Democrat. Even if it be true, as you predict--of
course I do not agree with you--that the Republican party will be out of
power for the next quarter of a century, or even if that party should
never again come into power, that fact cannot and will not have the
slightest weight with me. Therefore, I do not feel that you, as a member
of a National Democratic Administrati