[Illustration:  BLAINE’S GRAVE AT WASHINGTON, D.C.  THE TREE AT THE LEFT MARKS THE HEAD OF THE GRAVE, AND THE FIRST OF THE THREE LOW STONES IN THE FOREGROUND, NUMBERING FROM THE LEFT, MARKS THE FOOT.

From a photograph by Miss F.B.  Johnston.]

When Mr. Blaine was for the last time in New York on his way to Washington, stopping as was his habit at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, he asked me to walk with him to his room, fronting on Twenty-third Street, on the parlor floor; and he slowly, as if it were a task, unlocked the door.  There was a sparkle of autumnal crispness in the air, and he had a fire, that glittered and threw shadows about fitfully.  There was not much to say.  It was plain at last that Mr. Blaine was fading, that he had within a few weeks failed fast.  His great, bright eyes were greater than ever, but not so bright.  His face was awfully white; not that brainy pallor that was familiar—­something else!  He seated himself in the light of the fire, on an easy-chair.  There was a knock at his door, and a servant handed him a card, and he said:  “No;” and we were alone.  I could not think of a word of consolation; and in a moment he appeared to have forgotten me, and stared in a fixed, rapt dream at the flickering flame in the grate.  It occurred to me to get up and go away quietly, as conversation was impossible—­for there was too much to say.  It came to me that I ought not to leave him alone.  Something in him reminded me of the mystical phrases of the transcendent paragraph of his oration on Garfield, picturing the death of the second martyred President, by the ocean, while far off white ships touched the sea and sky, and the fevered face of the dying man felt “the breath of the eternal morning.”

Some weeks earlier Mr. Blaine and I had had a deep talk about men and things, and he was very kind, and his boundless generosity of nature never revealed itself with a greater or sadder charm.  He now remembered that conversation—­as a word disclosed—­and said:  “I could have endured all things if my boys had not died.”  The door opened, and his secretary walked in—­and I took Mr. Blaine’s hand for the last time, saying, “Good-night,” and he said, with a look that meant farewell—­“Good-by.”

His grave is on a slope that when I saw it was goldenly sunny, and the turf was strewn by his wife’s hand with lilies—­for it was Easter morning!  Close at his left was a steep, grassy bank, radiantly blue with violets, and there was in the shining air the murmurous hum of bees, making a slumbrous, restful music.  Blaine’s monument is a hickory tree whose broken top speaks of storms, and at his feet is a stone white as new snow, and on it only—­and they are enough—­the initials “J.G.B.,” that were the battle-cry of millions, and are and shall be always to memory dear.

[Footnote I:  This related to a matter General Sherman had mentioned in another letter, and did not refer to the subject I was trying to get him to consider.]