he actual President,
anticipating what was about to happen, appointed a body of Republicans
for the like purpose, and the advance guard of these appeared on the
scene the following Monday.

Within a week the St. Charles Hotel might have been mistaken for a
caravansary of the national capital. Among the Republicans were John
Sherman, Stanley Matthews, Garfield, Evarts, Logan, Kelley, Stoughton,
and many others. Among the Democrats, besides Lamar, Walthal and myself,
came Lyman Trumbull, Samuel J. Randall, William R. Morrison, McDonald,
of Indiana, and many others.

A certain degree of personal intimacy existed between the members of the
two groups, and the "entente" was quite as unrestrained as might have
existed between rival athletic teams. A Kentucky friend sent me a
demijohn of what was represented as very old Bourbon, and I divided
it with "our friends the enemy." New Orleans was new to most of the
"visiting statesmen," and we attended the places of amusement, lived
in the restaurants, and saw the sights as if we had been tourists in a
foreign land and not partisans charged with the business of adjusting a
Presidential election from implacable points of view.

My own relations were especially friendly with John Sherman and James
A. Garfield, a colleague on the Committee of Ways and Means, and with
Stanley Matthews, a near kinsman by marriage, who had stood as an elder
brother to me from my childhood.

Corruption was in the air. That the Returning Board was for sale and
could be bought was the universal impression. Every day some one turned
up with pretended authority and an offer to sell. Most of these were, of
course, the merest adventurers. It was my own belief that the Returning
Board was playing for the best price it could get from the Republicans
and that the only effect of any offer to buy on our part would be to
assist this scheme of blackmail.

The Returning Board consisted of two white men, Wells and Anderson;
and two negroes, Kenner and Casanave. One and all they were without
character. I was tempted through sheer curiosity to listen to a proposal
which seemed to come direct from the board itself, the messenger being a
well-known State Senator. As if he were proposing to dispose of a horse
or a dog he stated his errand.

"You think you can deliver the goods?" said I.

"I am authorized to make the offer," he answered.

"And for how much?" I asked.

"Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars," he rep