president of the Chamber of Commerce of
Cincinnati, at a large public meeting held in that city just prior to
the fall election, introduced Governor Hayes as the next Republican
candidate for President of the United States.

In 1872 a modest poet was inspired by the surrounding sentiment to sing:

"We bow not down to yonder rising sun,
As did the Parsee worshiper of old,
But bend in homage when its race is run,
And watch it sink in purple-fretted gold.
And thus to thee, oh Hayes! the tried, the true,
On battle-field and in the civic chair,
Our heart's deep gratitude, thy meed and due,
(As closes far too soon thy proud career),
Goes out with benedictions pure and high:
Oh may thy set be brief, and, like the sun,
Rise thou again--thy light to fill the sky,
A brighter course of glory still to run,
Till millions now unborn shall hail thy name
In ages yet to come, with grand acclaim!"

Early in 1875 he was overwhelmed with letters urging upon him the
acceptance of the third nomination for governor. Many of these letters
presented as an inducement in favor of acceptance that if he ran for
governor and succeeded in beating Allen, the prize of the presidency
would be within his reach. To one of these letters from a leading editor
he replied on April 10:

"The personal advantages you suggest rather tend to repel me. The
melancholy thing in our public life is the insane desire to get
higher.... But now I can't take that direction, and I will be ever
so much obliged if you will help drop me out of it as smoothly as
may be."

To a member of the State legislature he wrote:

"Content with the past, I am not in a state of mind about the
future. It is for us to act well in the present. George E. Pugh
used to say there is no political hereafter."

In the canvass of 1875, so much were the hearts of the people set upon
having their great State leader the National leader, that the masses
were invited in announcements for political meetings to come out and
hear "the next President of the United States."

As illustrating the firmness of Governor Hayes in adhering to
convictions, we give below a letter addressed to Hon. James A. Garfield.
It must be remembered that at the time this letter was written the
paper money madness prevailed through Ohio and in C