t than Chester A.
Arthur. I believed that his faithfulness and dignity in office should be
honoured with the nomination. There was some surprise occasioned when
Harvard refused to confer an LL.D. on Governor Butler, a rebuke that no
previous Governor of Massachusetts had suffered. After all, the country
was chiefly impressed in this event with the fact that an LL.D., or a
D.D., or an F.R.S., did not make the man. Americans were becoming very
good readers of character; they could see at a glance the difference
between right and wrong, but they were tolerant of both. Much more so
than I was. There was one great fault in American character that the
whole world admired; it was our love of hero-worship. A great man was
the man who did great things, no matter what that man might stand for in
religion or in morals.

There was Gambetta, whose friendship for America had won the admiration
of our country. I myself admired his eloquence, his patriotism, his
courage in office as Prime Minister of France; but his dying words
rolled like a wintry sea over all nations, "I am lost!" Gambetta was an
atheist, a man whose public indignities to womanhood were demonstrated
from Paris to Berlin. Gambetta's patriotism for France could never atone
for his atheism, and his infamy towards women. His death, in the dawn of
1883, was a page in the world's history turned down at the corner.

What an important year it was to be for us! In the spring of 1883 the
Brooklyn bridge was opened, and our church was within fifteen or twenty
minutes of the hotel centre of New York. I said then that many of us
would see the population of Brooklyn quadrupled and sextupled. In many
respects, up to this time, Brooklyn had been treated as a suburb of New
York, a dormitory for tired Wall Streeters. With the completion of the
bridge came new plans for rapid transit, for the widening of our
streets, for the advancement of our municipal interests. A consolidation
of Brooklyn and New York was then under discussion. It was a bad
look-out for office-holders, but a good one for tax-payers. At least
that was the prospect, but I never will see much encouragement in
American politics.

The success of Grover Cleveland and his big majority, as Governor, led
both wings of the Democratic party to promise us the millennium. Even
the Republicans were full of national optimism, going over to the
Democrats to help the jubilee of reform. Four months later, although we
were told tha