, dropping the "Lord Roscoe" comicality, and
speaking rapidly and seriously, with a flush of excitement: "Conkling,
after ten years of absolute despotism in New York--for Grant
did everything for him, and Hayes tried to comfort him--got the
elephantiasis of conceit. We read that gentlemen in Oriental
countries, having that disease in its advanced stage, need a
wheelbarrow or small wagon to aid their locomotion when they go out
to walk--and the population think there is something divine in it.
Conkling thought if he should go on parade in New York, and place the
developments of his vanity fully on exhibition, the whole people would
fall down and worship the phenomenon. But he was mistaken, for they
soon saw it was a plain, old-fashioned case of sore-head."

Then the President, having exhausted the elephantiasis as a divine
manifestation, expressed regrets that there had been such contentions
among those who should be friends of the administration; and repeated
his view of that which was due to the actual trust the people had
placed in him, and of which he could not honorably divest himself. He
thought the people already understood the case fairly well and would
be more and more of the opinion that he had tried to do the things
that were right, "with malice toward none and charity for all." We
talked until midnight. It was a Friday morning, and the President was
doomed to be shot the next day. The assassin had been on his path that
night. The President had gone out dining for the last time.

"And you will not go to Williams College with me?" he said.

I said: "Mr. President, you have forgotten you were assailed for being
in my company to Chautauqua; and I have been so fortunate since as to
gather a fresh crop of enemies, and do not want them to jump on to you
on my account--for there are enough upon you already."

That, the President said, was "curious and interesting," and he
laughed about my "fresh crop," and said something about cutting hay;
and I told him I had been invited to meet him Saturday night at Cyrus
W. Field's country place, where a dinner party was appointed; and
jumping up, hurried away. The light in the hall shone down on the
President's pale, high forehead, as he walked toward the stairway
leading to his apartments, and I saw him no more.

Something familiar struck me in the appearance of the watchman at
the door of the White House, and stopping, I said: "Did you hold this
position here in Lincoln's