How constantly through my life have I heard the same testimony of the power that answers prayer.  I believed it, and I said it repeatedly, that the reason American politics had become the most corrupt element of our nation was because we had ignored the power of prayer.  History everywhere confesses its force.  The Huguenots took possession of the Carolinas in the name of God.  William Penn settled Pennsylvania in the name of God.  The Pilgrim Fathers settled New England in the name of God.  Preceding the first gun of Bunker Hill, at the voice of prayer, all heads uncovered.  In the war of 1812 an officer came to General Andrew Jackson and said, “There is an unusual noise in the camp; it ought to be stopped.”  The General asked what this noise was.  He was told it was the voice of prayer.

“God forbid that prayer and praise should be an unusual noise in the camp,” said General Jackson.  “You had better go and join them.”

There was prayer at Valley Forge, at Monmouth, at Atlanta, at South Mountain, at Gettysburg.  But the infamy of politics was broad and wide, and universal.  Even the record of Andrew Johnson, our seventeenth President, was exhumed.  He was charged with conspiracy against the United States Government.  Because he came from a border State, where loyalty was more difficult than in the Northern States, he was accused of making a nefarious attack against our Government.  I did not accept these charges.  They were freighted with political purpose.  I said then, in order to prove General Grant a good man, it was not necessary to try and prove that Johnson was a bad one.  The President from Tennessee left no sons to vindicate his name.  I never saw President Johnson but once, but I refused to believe these attacks upon him.  They were an unwarranted persecution of the sacred memory of the dead.  No man who has been eminently useful has escaped being eminently cursed.

At our local elections in Brooklyn, in the autumn of 1885, three candidates for mayor were nominated.  They were all exceptionally good men.  Two of them were personal friends of mine, General Catlin and Dr. Funk.  Catlin had twice been brevetted for gallantry in the Civil War, and Dr. Funk was on the prohibition ticket, because he had represented prohibition all his life.  Mr. Woodward, the third candidate, I did not know, but he was a strict Methodist, and that was recommendation enough.  But there were pleasanter matters to think about than politics.

In November of this year, there appeared, at the Horticultural Hall in New York, a wonderful floral stranger from China—­the chrysanthemum.  Thousands of people paid to go and see these constellations of beauty.  It was a new plant to us then, and we went mad about it in true American fashion.  To walk among these flowers was like crossing a corner of heaven.  It became a mania of the times, almost like the tulip mania of Holland in the 17th century.  People who had voted that the Chinese must go, voted that the Chinese chrysanthemum could stay.  The rose was forgotten for the time being, and the violets, and the carnations, and the lily of the valley.  In America we were still the children of the world, delighted with everything that was new and beautiful.