Col.  Sellers knew the President very well, and had access to his presence when officials were kept cooling their heels in the Waiting-room.  The President liked to hear the Colonel talk, his voluble ease was a refreshment after the decorous dullness of men who only talked business and government, and everlastingly expounded their notions of justice and the distribution of patronage.  The Colonel was as much a lover of farming and of horses as Thomas Jefferson was.  He talked to the President by the hour about his magnificent stud, and his plantation at Hawkeye, a kind of principality—­he represented it.  He urged the President to pay him a visit during the recess, and see his stock farm.

“The President’s table is well enough,” he used to say, to the loafers who gathered about him at Willard’s, “well enough for a man on a salary, but God bless my soul, I should like him to see a little old-fashioned hospitality—­open house, you know.  A person seeing me at home might think I paid no attention to what was in the house, just let things flow in and out.  He’d be mistaken.  What I look to is quality, sir.  The President has variety enough, but the quality!  Vegetables of course you can’t expect here.  I’m very particular about mine.  Take celery, now —­there’s only one spot in this country where celery will grow.  But I an surprised about the wines.  I should think they were manufactured in the New York Custom House.  I must send the President some from my cellar.  I was really mortified the other day at dinner to see Blacque Bey leave his standing in the glasses.”

When the Colonel first came to Washington he had thoughts of taking the mission to Constantinople, in order to be on the spot to look after the dissemination, of his Eye Water, but as that invention; was not yet quite ready, the project shrank a little in the presence of vaster schemes.  Besides he felt that he could do the country more good by remaining at home.  He was one of the Southerners who were constantly quoted as heartily “accepting the situation.”

“I’m whipped,” he used to say with a jolly laugh, “the government was too many for me; I’m cleaned out, done for, except my plantation and private mansion.  We played for a big thing, and lost it, and I don’t whine, for one.  I go for putting the old flag on all the vacant lots.  I said to the President, says I, ’Grant, why don’t you take Santo Domingo, annex the whole thing, and settle the bill afterwards.  That’s my way.  I’d, take the job to manage Congress.  The South would come into it.  You’ve got to conciliate the South, consolidate the two debts, pay ’em off in greenbacks, and go ahead.  That’s my notion.  Boutwell’s got the right notion about the value of paper, but he lacks courage.  I should like to run the treasury department about six months.  I’d make things plenty, and business look up.’”