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cause, has made in the past twenty years, and the conspicuous place that it has held in our national politics, the speaker declared, is largely due to the part that Mr. Schurz has taken.
Mr. Schurz's part in the campaign for sound money in 1896, as well as in those other campaigns for a generation past, where this has been the issue, had been assigned the last place on the programme. Of this Ex-President Grover Cleveland had been invited to speak. Mr. Cleveland was unable to be present, but sent a letter, expressing his regret and paying a high tribute to the guest of the evening. The career of Mr. Schurz, he wrote, illustrates with peculiar aptness “the moral grandeur of disinterested public service, and the nobility of a fearless advocacy of the things that are right and just and safe.” Concluding, Mr. Cleveland declared, that, to him, the permanency and continued beneficence of our free institutions seemed to rest upon the cultivation by those entrusted with public duty “of the traits that have distinguished the man you propose to honor.”
The responsive address of Mr. Schurz, which was received with every evidence of appreciation, ended the programme of the evening.
