the first three." A very sweet-natured man, I think he never was happy as Chief-Justice. He would have preferred to be President, as we all hoped he would be. With his two beautiful and gifted daughters, Mr. Chase, whether Minister, Secretary, or Chief-Justice, always kept open a delightful house, and until his health failed he was a great pleasure to meet. He had the canny Scot in him, as his grandmother had. It gave a unique flavor to his wit, and shone in and out behind his remarkable genius for affairs in that public service for which he was so essentially suited.
I went to see him in his last days in New York, where he was under treatment for some nervous malady, and he talked of Keene as if nothing had intervened. "My tall schoolmaster," he said, "was the most fascinating person I have ever met. I felt a great confidence that he would not drop me into the snow. I have not always felt that same confidence in men since."
I suppose that this great man tasted the insincerity of human friendship and the ups and downs of fortune and the instability of fame as few men ever did, unless we may except James G. Blaine, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and Samuel J. Tilden, all of whom had the Presidency within their grasp, but it slipped away. And yet how often the Presidency has simply meant that a man shall be abused, distrusted, and worked to death while he is filling the great office, and that he should drop into unmerited oblivion when he has left the White House (General Grant alone excepted)! But, then, his fame was kept dear by the people. He could not travel through the remotest village that the farmer would not leave the plough in the furrow, and run for wife and children to come and see the man who had saved the nation. Even to touch his hand was distinction.
