had to do with the
campaign of 1881.

He was the Presidential candidate on the Greenback ticket, but it was
kept so quiet that I am not surprised to know that you did not hear
about it.

After the inauguration of Garfield the investigation and annulling of
star-route contracts fraudulently obtained were carried out, whereby two
million dollars' worth of these corrupt agreements were rendered null
and void.

On the morning of July 2, President Garfield was shot by a poor,
miserable, unbalanced, and abnormal growth whose name will not be
discovered even in the appendix of this work. He was tried, convicted,
and sent squealing into eternity.

The President lingered patiently for two months and a half, when he
died.

[Illustration: A PERSON JUMPING FROM IT IS NOT ALWAYS KILLED.]

After the accession of President Arthur, there occurred floods on the
lower Mississippi, whereby one hundred thousand people lost their homes.
The administration was not in any way to blame for this.

In 1883 the Brooklyn Bridge across East River was completed and ready
for jumping purposes. It was regarded as a great engineering success at
the time, but it is now admitted that it is not high enough. A person
jumping from it is not always killed.

The same year the Civil Service Bill became a law. It provides that
competitive examinations shall be made of certain applicants for office,
whereby mail-carriers must prove that they know how to teach school, and
guards in United States penitentiaries are required to describe how to
navigate a ship.

Possibly recent improvements have been made by which the curriculum is
more fitted to the crime, but in the early operations of the law the
janitor of a jail had to know what length shadow would be cast by a pole
18 feet 6-1/4 inches high on the third day of July at 11 o'clock 30 min.
and 20 sec. standing on a knoll 35 feet 8-1/8 inches high, provided 8
men in 9 days can erect such a pole working 8 hours per day.

In 1883 letter postage was reduced from three cents to two cents per
half-ounce, and in 1885 to two cents per ounce.

In 1884 Alaska was organized as a Territory, and after digging the snow
out of Sitka, so that the governor should not take cold in his system,
it was made the seat of government.

Chinese immigration in 1882 was forbidden for ten years, and in 1884 a
treaty with Mexico was made, a copy of which is on file in the State
Department, but not allowed to be loaned to the