t I will be able to
live again among you and to be one of you, and I trust in time to
overcome the notion that has sprung up within two or three years
that I am a human iceberg, dead to all human sympathies. I hope
you will enable me to overcome that difficulty. That you will
receive me kindly, and I think I will show you, if you doubt it,
that I have a heart to acknowledge gratitude--a heart that feels
for others, and willing to alleviate where I can all the evils to
which men and women are subject. I again thank you from the bottom
of my heart."

Among the many incidents in my life I recall this as one of the
happiest, when the bitterness and strife of political contests were
laid aside and kindness and charity took their place. I am glad
to say that the same friendly relations that existed between Senator
Thurman and myself have always been maintained with each of my
colleagues, without distinction of party.

Early in January I had accepted an invitation of the merchants of
Boston to attend the annual dinner of their association on the 31st
of that month. While the dinner was the stated object, yet I knew
that the speeches to be made were the real cause of the meeting.
These were to be made by Governor Long, Stewart L. Woodford and
others, real orators, while I was expected to talk to them about
money, debt and taxes. I met their wishes by a careful statement
of the mode of refunding, or, to define the word, the process of
reducing the burden of the public debt by reducing the rate of
interest. I stated at length the measures executed by Hamilton,
Gallatin and others, in paying in full the Revolutionary debt and
that created by the War of 1812, and those adopted in recent times.
The mode at each period was similar, but the amount of recent
refundings was twenty times greater than the national debt at the
beginning of the government, and our surplus revenue for that one
year just past would have paid the debt of the United States at
the close of the Revolutionary War. In all stages of our history
we have preserved the public faith by the honest discharge of every
obligation. Long, Woodford and others made eloquent speeches, and,
on the whole, the "dinner" was a pronounced success.

After my return to Washington, Garfield continued to write me
freely, especially about the selection of the Secretary of the
Treasury. In a note dated February 14 he gave me the names of a
number of prominent men and his impr