or admit any investigation of the kind you name. You of course have it entirely in your power to answer public complaints by a statement of the facts and a reference to the sources of information, and you have a right by a memorial addressed to Congress to implore an inquiry, if you think the matter of sufficient consequence to do so. On such a memorial doubtless the Senate or House would direct an investigation. But if you or any other prominent man commence the practice of appealing to Congress for investigations every time you are assailed in the newspapers, you will have a pretty busy life; and to appeal once and not afterward in some similar case raises an implication that you cannot bear an investigation in the second. On the whole I should advise you to fight it out as far as you like in the public prints until something more definite should be stated against you in one house or the other of Congress. I was sorry not to be able to see Mr. White at the time he called, and he could not wait until I should be at leisure.
TO JOSEPH MEDILL
To-day I received the Chicago Tribune of the 19th containing a long interview, in which Mr. Blaine responds to some remarks about him as a civil service reformer which appeared some time ago in the Evening Post, with a column or two of personal abuse directed against me. The abuse being of the old Gail Hamiltonian pattern, and somewhat stale, calls for no reply. Neither am I in the least disposed to enter into a dispute with Mr. Blaine as to whether he or I was more faithful to the principles of civil service reform while in office. In fact, I should not take notice of the matter at all but for a rather amusing circumstance, more amusing even than such a dispute would be.
Mr. Blaine is known to be of a very dramatic disposition,
