I began to feel that in the local management of our own big city there was an uplift, when two such sterling young men as James W. Ridgeway, and Joseph C. Hendrix, were nominated for District Attorney.  They were merely technical opponents, but were united in the cause of reform and honest administration against our criminal population.  We were fortunate in the degree of promise there was, in having a choice of such competent nominees.  But it was a period of historical jubilee in our country, this fall of 1883.

We were celebrating centennials everywhere, even at Harvard.  It seemed to be about a hundred years back since anything worth while had really happened in America.  Since 1870 there had been a round of centennials.  It was a good thing in the busy glorification of a brilliant present, and a glorious future, that we rehearsed the struggle and hardships by which we had arrived to this great inheritance of blessing and prosperity.

“The United States Government is a bubble-bursting nationality,” said Lord John Russell, but every year since has disproved the accuracy of this jeer.  Even our elections disproved it.  Candidates for the Presidency are pushed out of sight by a sudden wave of split tickets.  In the elections of 1883, in Ohio ten candidates were obliterated; in Pennsylvania five were buried and fifteen resurrected.  In Indiana, the record of names in United States political quicksands is too long too consider, the new candidates that sprang up being still larger in numbers.  And yet only six men in any generation become President.  Out of five thousand men, who consider themselves competent to be captains, only six are crowned with their ambition.  And these six are not generally the men who had any prospect of becoming the people’s choice.  The two political chiefs in convention, failing on the thirtieth ballot to get the nomination, some less conspicuous man is chosen as a compromise.  Political ambition seems to me a poor business.  There are men more worthy of national praise than the successful politicians; men like Isaac Hull; men whose generous gifts and Christian careers perpetuate the magnificent purposes of our lives.  Isaac Hull was a Quaker—­one of the best in that sect.  I lived among quakers for seven years in Philadelphia, and I loved them.  Mr. Hull illustrated in his life the principles of his sect, characterised by integrity of finance and of soul.  He rose to the front rank of public-spirited men, from the humble duties of a farmer’s boy.  He was one of the most important members of the Society of Friends, and I valued the privilege of his friendship more than that of any celebrity I ever knew.  He lived for the profit in standards rather than for wealth, and he passed on to a wider circle of friends beyond.