a man
of keen intelligence and wide information, and possessed a genial as
well as a caustic wit. Schurz could discuss present politics and past
history. He was well versed in European history of the eighteenth
century and the Napoleonic wars, and could talk about the power of
Voltaire in literature and the influence of Lessing on Goethe. From
appreciative discourse on the Wagner opera and the French drama, he
could, if the conversation turned to the Civil War, give a lively
account of the battles of Chancellorsville or Gettysburg, in both of
which he had borne an honorable part. Sherman was not a cosmopolitan
like his two colleagues, but he loved dining out. His manners were those
of the old-school gentleman; he could listen with genial appreciation,
and he could talk of events in American history of which he had been a
contemporaneous observer; as, for example, of the impressive oratory of
Daniel Webster at a dinner in Plymouth; or the difference between the
national conventions of his early political life and the huge ones of
the present, illustrating his comparison with an account of the Whig
convention of 1852, to which he went as a delegate.

Differing in many respects, Hayes and Grover Cleveland were alike in the
possession of executive ability and the lack of oratorical. We all know
that it is a purely academic question which is the better form of
government, the English or our own, as both have grown up to adapt
themselves to peculiar conditions. But when I hear an enthusiast for
Cabinet government and ministerial responsibility, I like to point out
that men like Hayes and Cleveland, who made excellent Presidents, could
never have been prime ministers. One cannot conceive of either in an
office equivalent to that of First Lord of the Treasury, being heckled
by members on the front opposition bench and holding his own or getting
the better of his opponents.

I have brought Hayes and Cleveland into juxtaposition, as each had a
high personal regard for the other. Hayes died on January 17, 1893.
Cleveland, the President-elect, was to be inaugurated on the following
fourth of March. Despite remonstrance and criticism from bitter
partisans of his own party, who deprecated any honor paid to one whom
all good Democrats deemed a fraudulent President, Cleveland traveled
from New York to Fremont, Ohio, to attend the funeral. He could only
think of Hayes as an ex-President and a man whom he highly esteemed.

EDWIN