The air was full of political clamour and strife in the election of 1884.  Never in this country was there a greater temptation to political fraud, because, after four month’s battle, the counting of the ballots revealed almost a tie.  I urged self-control among men who were angry and men who were bitter.  The enemies of Mr. Blaine were not necessarily the friends of Mr. Cleveland.  The enemies of Mr. Cleveland were bitter, but they were afraid of Mr. Blaine; for he was a giant intellectually, practically, physically, and he stood in the centre of a national arena of politics, prepared to meet all challenge.  Mr. Cleveland never really opposed him.  He faced him on party issues, not as an individual antagonist.  The excitement was intense during the suspense that followed the counting of the ballots, and Mr. Cleveland went into the White House amidst a roar of public opinion so confused and so vicious that there was no certainty of ultimate order in the country.  In after years I enjoyed his confidence and friendship, and I learned to appreciate the stability and reserve of his nature.  In a Milestone beyond this, I have recalled a conversation I had with him at the White House, and recorded my impressions of him.  Above the clamour of these troublesome times, I raised my voice and said that in the distant years to come the electors of New York, Alabama, and Maine, and California, would march together down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington for the discharge of the great duties of the Electoral College.

The storm passed, and the Democrats were in power.  It was the calm that follows an electrical disturbance.  The paroxysm of filth and moral death was over.

Mr. Vanderbilt, converted into a philanthropist, gave five hundred thousand dollars to a medical institute, and the world began to see new possibilities in great fortunes.  That a railroad king could also be a Christian king was a hopeful tendency of the times.  These were the acts that tended to smother the activities of Communism in America.

In the previous four years the curious astronomer had discovered the evolution of a new world in the sky, and so while on earth there were convulsions, in the skies there were new beauties born.  With the rising sun of the year 1885, one of our great and good men of Brooklyn saw it with failing eyesight.  Doctor Noah Hunt Schenck, pastor of St. Ann’s Episcopal Church, was stricken.  For fifteen years he had blessed our city with his benediction.  The beautiful cathedral which grew to its proportions of grandeur under Doctor Schenck’s pastorate, stood as a monument to him.