That Mr. Blaine was keenly disappointed when defeated for the Presidency at Cincinnati, there is no doubt; and that he began then to see that it was not his destiny to be President, is certain.

There is a great contrast in his favor in his manner of bearing this disappointment with that of Clay and Webster under somewhat similar circumstances.  Clay was furious at the nomination of General William Henry Harrison, and greeted with unmeasured denunciation those responsible for that judicious act; and Webster was bitter when Taylor and Scott were nominated in the first instance, but came, after a time, grandly out of the clouds.  It is an interesting coincidence that Webster when Secretary of State was a candidate for the Presidential nomination against his chief, President Fillmore, and died, on the 24th of October, 1852, a few months after Scott’s triumph at Baltimore and a few days before the popular election of Pierce.  The enduring memory of Mr. Blaine appeared in the last October he lived, in the precise remark, when something was said of the death of Webster, “Ah! day after to-morrow it will be forty years since Webster died.”  The news of the nomination of Hayes, Blaine received serenely, and before the vote was declared in the convention sent the nominee a cordial telegram of congratulation.  When he knew at Augusta in 1884 that he was beaten, he said:  “Personally I care less than my nearest friends would believe, but for the cause and for many friends I profoundly deplore the result.”  And that was the entire truth.  He felt that he had not been fairly beaten, but he gave utterance only to the public wrong done in the unfairness, and left that expression as a warning to the country.  He did not, as we have seen, follow the example of Clay, who persistently favored his own candidacy.  On the contrary, Blaine did not covet the Presidency, and tried to avoid the personal strife of 1884, and not for any of the apprehensive motives attributed to him by those who acted upon the feeling in his case that the spirit of justice was malevolent.

I feel that I should not now deal fairly with the public if I did not give here the letter from Blaine in my possession, that more completely than any published gives expression to his personal bearing when defeated.

LETTER FROM MR. BLAINE TO MR. HALSTEAD.

    (Personal.)

    AUGUSTA, MAINE, 16th Nov., ’84.

    DEAR MR. HALSTEAD:—­I think there would be no harm to the
    public and no personal injustice if you should insert the
    three enclosed items in your editorial columns.

I feel quite serene over the result.  As the Lord sent upon us an ass in the shape of a preacher, and a rainstorm, to lessen our vote in New York, I am disposed to feel resigned to the dispensation of defeat, which flowed directly from these agencies.

In missing a great honor I escaped a