and the Eastern seaboard. As in the end
we came to a parting of the ways I want to write of Mr. Cleveland as a
historian and not as a critic.

He said to Mr. Carlisle after one of our occasional tiffs: "Henry will
never like me until God makes me over again." The next time we met,
referring to this, I said: "Mr. President, I like you very much--very
much indeed--but sometimes I don't like some of your ways."

There were in point of fact two Clevelands--before marriage and after
marriage--the intermediate Cleveland rather unequal and indeterminate.
Assuredly no one of his predecessors had entered the White House so
wholly ignorant of public men and national affairs. Stories used to be
told assigning to Zachary Taylor this equivocal distinction. But General
Taylor had grown up in the army and advanced in the military service to
a chief command, was more or less familiar with the party leaders of his
time, and was by heredity a gentleman. The same was measurably true of
Grant. Cleveland confessed himself to have had no social training, and
he literally knew nobody.

Five or six weeks after his inauguration I went to Washington to ask a
diplomatic appointment for my friend, Boyd Winchester. Ill health had
cut short a promising career in Congress, but Mr. Winchester was now
well on to recovery, and there seemed no reason why he should not and
did not stand in the line of preferment. My experience may be worth
recording because it is illustrative.

In my quest I had not thought of going beyond Mr. Bayard, the new
Secretary of State. I did go to him, but the matter seemed to make no
headway. There appeared a hitch somewhere. It had not crossed my mind
that it might be the President himself. What did the President know or
care about foreign appointments?

He said to me on a Saturday when I was introducing a party of Kentucky
friends: "Come up to-morrow for luncheon. Come early, for Rose"--his
sister, for the time being mistress of the White House--"will be at
church and we can have an old-fashioned talk-it-out."

The next day we passed the forenoon together. He was full of homely
and often whimsical talk. He told me he had not yet realized what had
happened to him.

"Sometimes," he said, "I wake at night and rub my eyes and wonder if it
is not all a dream."

He asked an infinite number of questions about this, that and the
other Democratic politician. He was having trouble with the Kentucky
Congressmen. He had appoin