governor in the full tide of his speech, which evidently
would require about three hours, and the chairman declared the
meeting adjourned.

Senator Foraker, of Ohio, who was one of the appointed speakers,
told me the next morning that at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where
he was stopping, he was just getting into bed when the governor
burst into his room and fairly shouted: "Foraker, no wonder
New York is almost always wrong. You saw to-night that it would
not listen to the truth. Now I want to tell you what I intended
to say." He was shouting with impassioned eloquence, his voice
rising until, through the open windows, it reached Madison Square Park,
when the watchman burst in and said: "Sir, the guests in this
hotel will not stand that any longer, but if you must finish your
speech I will take you out in the park."

During Cleveland's administration one of the New York banquets
became a national affair. The principal speaker was the secretary
of the interior, Lucius Q. C. Lamar, who afterwards became
United States senator and justice of the Supreme Court. Mr. Lamar
was one of the ablest and most cultured men in public life, and
a fine orator. I was called upon so late that it was impossible
to follow any longer the serious discussions of the evening, and
what the management and the audience wanted from me was some fun.

Lamar, with his Johnsonian periods and the lofty style of
Edmund Burke, furnished an opportunity for a little pleasantry.
He came to me, when I had finished, in great alarm and said:
"My appearance here is not an ordinary one and does not permit
humor. I am secretary of the interior, and the representative of
the president and his administration. My speech is really the
message of the president to the whole country, and I wish you
would remedy any impression which the country might otherwise
receive from your humor."

This I was very glad to do, but it was an instance of which I have
met many, of a very distinguished and brilliant gentleman taking
himself too seriously. At another rather solemn function of this
kind I performed the same at the request of the management, but
with another protest from the orator and his enmity.

In reminiscing, after he retired from the presidency, Mr. Cleveland
spoke to me of his great respect and admiration for Mr. Lamar.
Cleveland's speeches were always short. His talent was for
compression and concentration, and he could not understand the
necessity fo