Late in the week before the meeting of the Chicago National Republican Convention in 1884, I received in Cincinnati a telegram from Mr. Blaine requesting me to call on him in Washington, where he lived on the opposite side of Lafayette Square from that of the celebrated old house where he spent his last days.  He was engaged on his “Twenty Years in Congress.”  I called on him the day after his despatch reached me, making haste, for I was about to go to Chicago; and he first said he feared he had sent for me on an insufficient errand, and after a moment’s pause began to speak of the approaching convention, and quickly used the expression—­“I am alarmed.”

[Illustration:  MR. BLAINE IN 1891.

This is accounted one of the best portraits of Mr. Blaine in existence.  It is from a photograph taken at Bar Harbor in the autumn of 1891 by Mr. A. von Mumm Schwartzenstein, then Charge d’Affaires of the German Empire at Washington, and is here reproduced by the kind permission of Mr. W.E.  Curtis.]

“Concerning what are you frightened?” I inquired; and added:  “You surely are not afraid you are not going to be nominated?”

He responded with a flash of his eyes and a smile:  “Oh, no; I am afraid I shall be nominated, and have sent for you for that reason, and want you to assist in preventing my nomination.”  I shook my head, and Mr. Blaine asked:  “Why not?”

I said I had not been so long in his confidence and known by his friends to be of them, to venture upon such an enterprise as working in opposition.  If I should appear actively against him, no matter how I presented the matter, the easy answer to any argument of mine would be that I had relapsed into personal antagonism to him.  I then said:  “I have not heard of this;” and asked:  “Are there many who know that you are against your candidacy?” He said he had talked freely to that effect, and mentioned William Walter Phelps as one who was fully acquainted with his views, and also Colonel Parsons, of the Natural Bridge, Virginia, then in the house.  I said:  “Mr. Blaine, I think it is too late.  I have looked over the field, and your nomination is almost certain—­the drift is your way.  Why precisely do you object, and what exactly do you think should happen?” He replied in his rapid way with much feeling, and I believe his very words were:  “The objection to my nomination is that I cannot be elected.  With the South solid against us we cannot succeed without New York, and I cannot carry that State.  There are factions there and influences before voting and after voting, such that the party cannot count upon success with me.  I am sure of it—­I have thought it all over, and my deliberate judgment is as I tell you.  I know, too, where I am strong as well as where I am weak—­and we might, if we should get into the campaign with my name at the head of the ticket, think we were going to win.  We would get to believing it, perhaps, but we should