I had a glimpse of James G. Elaine when I went to his home in Augusta, Maine, to write his biography for the committee.  A day or two after it was finished a distinguished Senator from Washington came to see me in Philadelphia and asked if Mr. Blaine had seen the book, and I told him that he certainly had.  “Did he see that second chapter?” “Of course he did,” said I; “he corrected it.”  Then he wanted to know how much money it would take to get the book out of circulation.  “Why, what is the matter with the book,” said I, but he would not tell me, and said that he would pay me well if I would only keep the book from circulation.  He did not tell me what was the matter.  I told him that the publishers owned the copyright, having bought it from me.  He said, “Is it not possible for you to take a trip to Europe to-morrow morning?” “But why take a trip to Europe?” “The committee will pay all of your expenses, all your family’s expenses, and of any servants you wish lo take with you—­only get out of the country.”  “Well,” I said, “I am not going to leave the country for my country’s good, unless I know what I am going for.”  I never could find out what the trouble with that second chapter was, and I afterwards asked Mrs. Blaine if she knew what was the matter.  She then broke out in a paroxysm of grief and said that if he had stayed in Washington, Pennsylvania, where he was a teacher, “he would be living yet.”  She said “he had given thirty years of his life to the public service, and now they have so ungratefully disgraced his name, sent him to an early grave, and all in consequence of what he has done for the public.  He is a stranger to his country—­a stranger to his friends,” and then she said, “O would to God he had stayed in Pennsylvania!” I left her then, but I have never known what was in that second chapter that caused the disturbance.  But I do know the second chapter was concerning their early and happy life in Washington, Pennsylvania, where he taught in the college.

Near our home in Newton, Massachusetts, was that of F.F.  Smith, who wrote “America.”  It was of him that Oliver Wendell Holmes said that “Nature tried to hide him by naming him Smith.”  Smith lived that quiet and restful life that reminds one of Tennyson’s “Brook” when thinking of him.  He knew the glory of modest living.

The last time I saw the sweet Quaker poet, John Greenleaf Whittier, was in Amesbury, before he died.  He sent a note to the lecture hall asking me to come to come to him.  I asked him what was his favorite poem of his own writing.  He said he had not thought very much about it, but said that there was one that he especially remembered: 

  “I know not where His islands lift
     Their fronded palms in air,
  I only know I cannot drift
     Beyond His love and care.”

I then asked him, “Mr. Whittier, how could you write all those war songs which sent us young men to war, and you a peaceful Quaker?  I cannot understand it.”  He smiled and said that his great-grandfather had been on a ship that was attacked by pirates, and as one of the pirates was climbing up the rope into their ship, his great-grandfather grasped a knife and cut the rope, saying:  “If thee wants the rope, thee can have it.”  He said that he had inherited something of the same spirit.