Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/128

96 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS party. He was defeated by Mr. Hewitt, but he polled relatively a larger vote than any republican candidate had done up to that time. As usual, no activities, whether those of a wilderness hunter or those of a republican candidate for office, caused his pen to be idle. In this year he wrote his "Life of Thomas H. Benton," and in the following year his "Life of Gouverneur Morris." As to his literary style, it should perhaps be remarked that the themes which he has usually chosen do not call for all the resources of expression that he has at command. Force, simplicity, clearness, and, when necessary, incisive satire, are the qualities which his historic, political, and critical writings reveal; but besides these characteristics he can use, when he needs it, considerable poetic subtlety. No man who had not in him somewhere a strain of the artist could have made the remark which he did about the Western Bad Lands, that they resembled in appearance the sound of the language used by Edgar Allan Poe. After his contest for the mayoralty of New York, though he was to be nine years in the public service, no elective office was offered him until he ran for governor of the state. In 1889 he was ap pointed by President Harrison a member of the United States civil service commission. As his life had been at Albany, so it now was in Washington a struggle for honesty against the purse politicians. His methods here were the same