great and oppressive responsibility.  You know—­perhaps better than any one—­how much I didn’t want the nomination; but perhaps, in view of all things, I have not made a loss by the canvass.  At least I try to think not.  The other candidate would have fared hard in Maine, and would have been utterly broken in Ohio.

    Sincerely,

    JAMES G. BLAINE.

    Of course all this is private.

P.S.—­This note was written before receipt of yours.  Pray publish nothing of the kind you intimate unless you first permit me to see the proof.  Don’t be afraid of the enclosed items.  They are rock-ribbed for truth and for a good rendering of public opinion.

Mr. Blaine refers in the closing paragraph to the proposition I made to him to publish the true story of his candidacy—­substantially the same pressed upon the attention of General Sherman.  Between them they suppressed me, but it is due them that this chapter of history should be known now that they are gone.

I had the privilege of walking with Mr. Blaine in the beautiful and fragrant parks at Homburg, in Southern Germany, in the summer of 1887, and discussing with him the question whether he should be a candidate for the Republican nomination the next spring.  He then seemed to be very well, but exertion speedily fatigued him.  He was on sight a very striking personage, and always instantly regarded with interest by strangers.  His personal appearance was of the utmost refinement and of irreproachable dignity.  His absolute cleanliness was something dainty, his dress simple but fitting perfectly and of the best material.  His face was very pale, but his sparkling eyes contradicted the pallor.

His form was erect, and his figure that of youth.  His hair and beard were exquisitely white.  His mouth had the purity of a child’s, and he never had tasted tobacco or used spirituous liquors, save when his physician had recommended a little whiskey, and then not enough to color a glass.  He drank sparingly of claret and champagne, caring only for the flavor.  He was gentle, kindly, genial, and in a manly sense beautiful.  There are many distinguished English people at Homburg in the season, and they were gratified to meet Mr. Blaine, and charmed with him.  It required no ceremony to announce him as a personage—­a man who had made events—­and he never posed or gave the slightest hint, in his movements, of conscious celebrity.  I never saw him bothered by being aware of himself but once, and that was when, across the street from the Fifth Avenue Hotel, in the dusk of an evening, he shaded his face with his hand, and looked curiously at ten thousand people who were gazing at the house, and shouting madly for him, expecting that he would appear at a window and make acknowledgment of their enthusiasm.  Suddenly he saw in the glance of one beside him that he was curiously yet doubtfully regarded, and hastened away in fear of his friends, who in their delight at discovering him would have become a mob.