ting when others were playing
and enjoying the pleasures of society. From the beginning he was a
calculator. Martin Van Buren, to whom he was greatly attached, often
spoke of him as 'The sagacious Sammy.'

Thrown into contact with such men at his parent's home, he early evinced
a fondness for politics which first revealed itself in an essay on 'The
Political Aspect,' displaying ability far beyond one of his years, which
was printed in the _Albany Argus_, and which was attributed to Mr. Van
Buren, at that time the leader of the Albany Regency.

At twenty he entered Yale College, but ill-health compelled his return
home. He, however, afterward resumed his studies at the University of
New York; graduating from that institution he began the practice of law.
At the bar he became known as a sound, but not especially brilliant
pleader. In 1866 he was chosen Chairman of the State Committee of his
party. In 1870-1, he was largely instrumental in unearthing frauds
perpetrated in the city of New York, and in 1874 was elected the
'reform governor' of the great Empire State. Although in political
discord with Mr. Tilden, it is in no disparaging sense that we speak of
him. It is in the sense of a historian bound and obligated to truth that
we view him. We regard him as the MYSTERIOUS STATESMAN OF AMERICAN
HISTORY.

His personal character was, to a great extent, shrouded from the public
in a veil of mystery, which had both its voluntary and involuntary
elements. If Mr. Tilden had desired to be otherwise than mysterious it
would have required much more self-control and ingenuity than would have
been necessary to thicken the veil to impenetrability.

His habit was to weigh both sides of every question, and therein he
resembled, though in other particulars entirely different, the late
Henry J. Raymond, the founder of the _New York Times_; and the effect
was to some extent similar, for each of these men saw both sides of
every question so fully as to be under the power of both sides, which
sometimes produced an equilibrium, causing hesitation when the crisis
required action.

Mr. Tilden had intellectual qualities of the very highest order. He
could sit down before a mass of incoherent statements, and figures that
would drive most men insane, and elucidate them by the most painstaking
investigation, and feel a pleasure in the work. Indeed, an intimate
friend of his assures us that his eye would gleam with delight when a
task was set