o his office. As soon as I entered, he said:
"Go away, I don't want to see you again." I appealed to him,
saying: "I cannot lose so good a friend as you. If there is
anything I have done or said, I will do everything in my power
to make it right." He turned on me sharply and with great emotion
told this story: "My wife and I lived in loving harmony for over
thirty years, and when she died recently I was heartbroken. The
whole town was sympathetic; most of the business houses closed
during the hour of the funeral. I had arranged to have ministers
whom my wife admired, and with them selected passages of scriptures
and hymns to which she was devoted. A new minister in town was
invited by the others to participate, and without my knowledge.
I looked over the congregation, all Mary's friends. I listened
to the services, which Mary herself would have chosen, and said
to Mary's spirit, which I knew to be hovering about: 'We are all
paying you a loving tribute.' Then the new minister had for his
part the announcement and reading of a hymn. At the last Republican
convention at Saratoga, in order to illustrate the condition of
the Democratic party, you told a story about a boy walking among
the children's graves in the old cemetery at Peekskill, eating
green apples and whistling 'Nearer, my God, to Thee.' The new
minister gave that hymn, 'Nearer, my God, to Thee.' Your story
came up in my mind, and I burst out laughing. I disgraced myself,
insulted the memory of Mary, and I never want to see you again."

XXI. NATIONAL REPUBLICAN CONVENTIONS

When the Republican convention met in 1912 I was again a delegate.
In my fifty-six years of national conventions I never had such an
intensely disagreeable experience. I felt it my duty to support
President Taft for renomination. I thought he had earned it by
his excellent administration. I had many ties with him, beginning
with our associations as graduates of Yale, and held for him a
most cordial regard. I was swayed by my old and unabated love
for Roosevelt. In that compromise and harmony were impossible.
I saw that, with the control of the organization and of the
convention on the side of Mr. Taft, and with the wild support for
Roosevelt of the delegates from the States which could be relied
upon to give Republican majorities, the nomination of either
would be sure defeat.

I was again a delegate to the Republican convention of 1916.
The party was united. P