at home. He was not at all fitted
for the position of Chief Executive of the United States. And I
say this not in a spirit of hostility, but in the most kindly way,
because I loved General Garfield as one of my earliest friends, in
those days of long ago, when I served in the Thirty-ninth Congress.

There was no man in the Thirty-ninth Congress with whom I was
afterwards so long and intimately associated as I was with the late
Senator William B. Allison of Iowa, with whom I served in the Senate
for a quarter of a century.

Senator Allison was quite a prominent member of the House when I
entered Congress, and was serving then as a member of the important
Ways and Means Committee. He was regarded as one of the ablest
and most influential of the Western members.

From the very earliest time I knew him, Senator Allison was an
authority on matters pertaining to finance. While he was in favor
of a protective tariff, he was not particularly a high-tariff
advocate; he, and the late General Logan who was then in the House,
and I worked together on tariff matters, as against the high-tariff
advocates, led by General Schenck.

On one occasion we defeated a high-tariff proposition that General
Schenck was advocating. He was furious, and rising up in his place,
declared:

"I might as well move to lay the bill on the table and to write as
its epitaph--'nibbled to death by pismires!'"

The remark made General Logan terribly angry; but Senator Allison,
who had a quiet, keen sense of humor, and I were very much amused,
--as much at the fury of Logan as at the remark of Schenck.

As a member of the House, Senator Allison followed the more radical
element against President Johnson. He was much more radical than
I was in those days, and he attacked President Johnson repeatedly
on the floor of the House, in tone and manner utterly unlike himself
when later he served in the Senate.

In the upper body he was decidedly a conservative. He never
committed himself until he was absolutely certain. He was always
regarded as a wise man, and he exercised an extraordinary control
over members, in settling troublesome questions and bringing about
harmony in the Senate. He had powerful influence, not only with
members of his own party, but with members of the opposition.
Every one had confidence in him. His statements were accepted
without question. He never attempted oratory, but by cool statement
of facts he moulded the opinions