already in. I want yours." Of
course, no reporter had been to either of us. Mr. Choate had in
his speech an unusual thing for him, a long piece of poetry. When
my turn came to reply I said: "The reporter came to me, as
Mr. Choate has said, and made the remark: 'I already have Choate's
speech. It has in it a good deal of poetry.' I asked the reporter:
'From what author is the poetry taken?' He answered: 'I do not
know the author, but the poetry is so bad I think Choate has
written it himself.'"

Mr. Choate told me a delightful story of his last interview with
Mr. Evarts before he sailed for Europe to take up his ambassadorship
at the Court of St. James. "I called," he said, "on Mr. Evarts
to bid him good-by. He had been confined to his room by a fatal
illness for a long time. 'Choate,' he said, 'I am delighted with
your appointment. You eminently deserve it, and you are
pre-eminently fit for the place. You have won the greatest
distinction in our profession, and have harvested enough of its
rewards to enable you to meet the financial responsibilities of
this post without anxiety. You will have a most brilliant and
useful career in diplomacy, but I fear I will never see you again.'"

Mr. Choate said: "Mr. Evarts, we have had a delightful partnership
of over forty years, and when I retire from diplomacy and resume
the practice of the law I am sure you and I will go on together
again for many years in the same happy old way."

Evarts replied: "No, Choate, I fear that cannot be. When I think
what a care I am to all my people, lying so helpless here, and
that I can do nothing any more to repay their kindness, or to help
in the world, I feel like the boy who wrote from school to his
mother a letter of twenty pages, and then added after the end:
'P. S. Dear mother, please excuse my longevity.'"

Where one has a reputation as a speaker and is also known to oblige
friends and to be hardly able to resist importunities, the demands
upon him are very great. They are also sometimes original and unique.

At one time, the day before Christmas, a representative of the
New York World came to see me, and said: "We are going to give
a dinner to-night to the tramps who gather between ten and eleven
o'clock at the Vienna Restaurant, opposite the St. Denis Hotel,
to receive the bread which the restaurant distributes at that hour."
This line was there every night standing in the cold waiting their
turn. I went do