them, that he believed I intended to be a good and efficient President, and that to the best of his ability he would support me in it making my Administration a success.  He kept his word with absolute good faith.  He had been in the Civil War, and was a medal of honor man; and I think my having been in the Spanish War gave him at the outset a kindly feeling toward me.  He was also a very well-read man—­I owe to him, for instance, my acquaintance with the writings of the Finnish novelist Topelius.  Not only did he support me on almost every public question in which I was most interested—­including, I am convinced, every one on which he felt he conscientiously could do so—­but he also at the time of his death gave a striking proof of his disinterested desire to render a service to certain poor people, and this under conditions in which not only would he never know if the service were rendered but in which he had no reason to expect that his part in it would ever be made known to any other man.

Quay was descended from a French voyageur who had some Indian blood in him.  He was proud of this Indian blood, took an especial interest in Indians, and whenever Indians came to Washington they always called on him.  Once during my Administration a delegation of Iroquois came over from Canada to call on me at the White House.  Their visit had in it something that was pathetic as well as amusing.  They represented the descendants of the Six Nations, who fled to Canada after Sullivan harried their towns in the Revolutionary War.  Now, a century and a quarter later, their people thought that they would like to come back into the United States; and these representatives had called upon me with the dim hope that perhaps I could give their tribes land on which they could settle.  As soon as they reached Washington they asked Quay to bring them to call on me, which he did, telling me that of course their errand was hopeless and that he had explained as much to them, but that they would like me to extend the courtesy of an interview.  At the close of the interview, which had been conducted with all the solemnities of calumet and wampum, the Indians filed out.  Quay, before following them, turned to me with his usual emotionless face and said, “Good-by, Mr. President; this reminds one of the Flight of a Tartar Tribe, doesn’t it?” I answered, “So you’re fond of De Quincey, Senator?” to which Quay responded, “Yes; always liked De Quincey; good-by.”  And away he went with the tribesmen, who seemed to have walked out of a remote past.

Quay had become particularly concerned about the Delawares in the Indian Territory.  He felt that the Interior Department did not do them justice.  He also felt that his colleagues of the Senate took no interest in them.  When in the spring of 1904 he lay in his house mortally sick, he sent me word that he had something important to say to me, and would have himself carried round to see me.  I sent back word not to think of doing so, and that on my way back from