In Europe, the war dance of nations continued.  In the twenty-two years preceding the year 1820 Christendom had paid ten billions of dollars for battles.  The exorbitant taxes of Great Britain and the United States were results of war.  There was a great wave of Gospel effort in America to counteract the European war fever.  It permeated the legislature in Albany.  One morning some members of the New York legislature inaugurated a prayer meeting in the room of the Court of Appeals, and that meeting, which began with six people, at the fifth session overflowed the room.  Think of a Gospel Revival in the Albany Legislature!  Yet why not just such meetings at all State Capitals, in this land of the Pilgrim Fathers, of the Huguenots, of the Dutch reformers, of the Hungarian exiles?

Occasionally, we were inspired by the record of honest political officials.  My friend Thomas A. Hendricks died when he was Vice-president of the United States Government.  He was an honest official, and yet he was charged with being a coward, a hypocrite, a traitor.  He was a great soul.  He withstood all the temptations of Washington in which so many men are lost.  I met him first on a lecturing tour in the West.  As I stepped on to the platform, I said, “Where is Governor Hendricks?” With a warmth and cordiality that came from the character of a man who loved all things that were true, he stood up, and instead of shaking hands, put both his arms around my shoulders, saying heartily, “Here I am.”  I went on with my lecture with a certain pleasure in the feeling that we understood each other.  Years after, I met him in his rooms in Washington, at the close of the first session as presiding officer of the Senate, and I loved him more and more.  Many did not realise his brilliancy, because he had such poise of character, such even methods.  The trouble has been, with so many men of great talent in Washington, that they stumble in a mire of dissipation.  Mr. Hendricks never got aboard that railroad train so popular with political aspirants.  The Dead River Grand Trunk Railroad is said to have for its stations Tippleton, Quarrelville, Guzzler’s Junction, Debauch Siding, Dismal Swamp, Black Tunnel, Murderer’s Gulch, Hangman’s Hollow, and the terminal known as Perdition.

Mr. Hendricks met one as a man ought always to meet men, without any airs of superiority, or without any appearance of being bored.  A coal heaver would get from him as polite a bow as a chief justice.  He kept his patience when he was being lied about.  Speeches were put in his mouth which he never made, interviews were written, the language of which he never used.  The newspapers that had lied about him, when he lived, turned hypocrites, and put their pages in mourning rules when he died.  There were some men appointed to attend his memorial services in Indianapolis on November 30, 1885, whom I advised to stay away, and to employ their hours in reviewing those old campaign speeches, in which they had tried