Part 3
For many years afterward I was pursued by this unlucky speech, or rather by the misinterpretation given to it alike by friend and foe. Nast’s first cartoon was accepted as a faithful portrait, and I was accordingly satirized and stigmatized, although no thought of violence ever had entered my mind, and in the final proceedings I had voted for the Electoral Commission Bill and faithfully stood by its decisions. Joseph Pulitzer, who immediately followed me on the occasion named, declared that he wanted my “one hundred thousand” to come fully armed and ready for business; yet he never was taken to task or reminded of his temerity.
VI
The Electoral Commission Bill was considered with great secrecy by the Joint Committees of the House and Senate. Its terms were in direct contravention of Mr. Tilden’s plan. This was simplicity itself. He was for asserting, by formal resolution, the conclusive right of the two Houses acting concurrently to count the electoral vote and determine what should be counted as electoral votes, and for denying, also by formal resolution, the pretension set up by the Republicans that the President of the Senate had lawful right to assume that function. He was for urging that issue in debate in both Houses and before the country. He thought that if the attempt should be made to usurp for the President of the Senate a power to make the count, and thus practically to control the Presidential election, the scheme would break down in process of execution.
Strange to say, Mr. Tilden was not consulted by the party leaders in Congress until the fourteenth of January, and then only by Mr. Hewitt, the extra-constitutional features of the Electoral Tribunal measure having already received the assent of Mr. Bayard and Mr. Thurman, the Democratic members of the Senate Committee. Standing by his original plan, and answering Mr. Hewitt’s statement that Mr. Bayard and Mr. Thurman were fully committed, Mr. Tilden said: “Is it not, then, rather late to consult me?” to which Mr. Hewitt replied: “They do not consult you. They are public men, and have their own duties and responsibilities. I consult you.” In the course of the discussion with Mr. Hewitt which followed Mr. Tilden said, “If you go into conference with your adversary, and can’t break off because you feel you must agree to something, you cannot negotiate--you are not fit to negotiate. You will be beaten upon every detail.” Replying to the apprehension of a collision of force between the parties, Mr. Tilden thought it exaggerated, but said: “Why surrender now? You can always surrender. Why surrender before the battle, for fear you may have to surrender after the battle?”
In short, Mr. Tilden condemned the proceeding as precipitate. It was a month before the time for the count, and he saw no reason why opportunity should not be given for consideration and consultation by all the representatives of the people. He treated the state of mind of Bayard and Thurman as a panic in which they were liable to act in haste and repent at leisure. He stood for publicity and wider discussion, distrusting a scheme to submit such vast interests to a small body sitting in the Capitol, as likely to become the sport of intrigue and fraud.
Mr. Hewitt returned to Washington and, without communicating to Mr. Tilden’s immediate friends in the House his attitude and objection, united with Mr. Thurman and Mr. Bayard in completing the bill and reporting it to the Democratic Advisory Committee, as, by a caucus rule, had to be done with all measures relating to the great issue then before us. No intimation had preceded it. It fell like a bombshell upon the members of the Committee. In the debate that followed Mr. Bayard was very insistent, answering the objections at once offered by me, first aggressively and then angrily, going the length of saying, “If you do not accept this plan I shall wash my hands of the whole business, and you can go ahead and seat your President in your own way.”
Mr. Randall, the Speaker, said nothing, but he was with me, as was a majority of my colleagues. It was Mr. Hunton, of Virginia, who poured oil on the troubled waters, and, somewhat in doubt as to whether the changed situation had changed Mr. Tilden, I yielded my better judgment, declaring it as my opinion that the plan would seat Hayes, and there being no other protestant the Committee finally gave a reluctant assent.
In “open session” a majority of Democrats favored the bill. Many of them made it their own. They passed it. There was belief that justice David Davis, who was expected to become a member of the Commission, was sure for Tilden. If, under this surmise, he had been, the political complexion of “eight to seven” would have been reversed. Elected to the United States Senate from Illinois, Judge Davis declined to serve, and Mr. Justice Bradley was chosen for the Commission in his place. The day after the inauguration of Hayes my kinsman, Stanley Matthews, said to me, “You people wanted Judge Davis. So did we. I tell you what I know, that Judge Davis was as safe for us as Judge Bradley. We preferred him because he carried more weight.” The subsequent career of Judge Davis in the Senate gives conclusive proof that this was true.
When the consideration of the disputed votes before the Commission had proceeded far enough to demonstrate the likelihood that its final decision would be for Hayes, a movement of obstruction and delay, “a filibuster,” was organized by about forty Democratic members of the House. It proved rather turbulent than effective. The South stood very nearly solid for carrying out the agreement in good faith. “Toward the close the filibuster received what appeared formidable reinforcement from the Louisiana Delegation.” This was in reality merely a “bluff,” intended to induce the Hayes people to make certain concessions touching their State government. It had the desired effect. Satisfactory assurances having been given, the count proceeded to the end--a very bitter end, indeed, for the Democrats.
The final conference between the Louisianians and the accredited representatives of Mr. Hayes was held at Wormley’s Hotel and came to be called “the Wormley Conference.” It was the subject of uncommon interest and heated controversy at the time and long afterward. Without knowing why or for what purpose, I was asked to be present by my colleague, Mr. Ellis, of Louisiana, and later in the day the same invitation came to me from the Republicans through Mr. Garfield. Something was said about my serving as “a referee.” Just before the appointed hour General M. C. Butler, of South Carolina, afterward so long a Senator in Congress, said to me: “This meeting is called to enable Louisiana to make terms with Hayes. South Carolina is as deeply concerned as Louisiana, but we have nobody to represent us in Congress and hence have not been invited. South Carolina puts herself in your hands and expects you to secure for her whatever terms are given to Louisiana.” So, of a sudden, I found myself invested with responsibility equally as an “agent” and a “referee.”
It is hardly worth while repeating in detail all that passed at this Wormley Conference, made public long ago by Congressional investigation. When I entered the apartment of Mr. Evarts at Wormley’s I found, besides Mr. Evarts, Mr. John Sherman, Mr. Garfield, Governor Dennison and Mr. Stanley Matthews, of the Republicans, and Mr. Ellis, Mr. Levy, and Mr. Burke, Democrats of Louisiana. Substantially, the terms had been agreed upon during previous conferences; that is, the promise that, if Hayes came in, the troops should be withdrawn and the people of Louisiana be left free to set their house in order to suit themselves. The actual order withdrawing the troops was issued by President Grant two or three days later, just as he was going out of office.
“Now, gentlemen,” said I, half in jest, “I am here to represent South Carolina, and if the terms given to Louisiana are not equally applied to South Carolina, I become a filibuster myself to-morrow morning.” There was some chaffing as to what right I had there and how I got in, when with great earnestness Governor Dennison, who had been the bearer of a letter from Mr. Hayes which he had read to us, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “As a matter of course, the Southern policy to which Mr. Hayes has here pledged himself embraces South Carolina as well as Louisiana.” Mr. Sherman, Mr. Garfield, and Mr. Evarts concurred warmly in this, and, immediately after we separated, I communicated the fact to General Butler.
In the acrimonious discussion which subsequently sought to make “bargain, intrigue, and corruption” of this Wormley Conference, and to involve certain Democratic members of the House who were nowise party to it, but had sympathized with the purpose of Louisiana and South Carolina to obtain some measure of relief from intolerable local conditions, I never was questioned or assailed. No one doubted my fidelity to Mr. Tilden, who had been promptly advised of all that passed and who justified what I had done. Though “conscripted,” as it were, and rather a passive agent, I could see no wrong in the proceeding. I had spoken and voted in favor of the Electoral Tribunal Bill and, losing, had no thought of repudiating its conclusions. Hayes was already as good as seated. If the States of Louisiana and South Carolina could save their local autonomy out of the general wreck, there seemed no good reason to forbid. On the other hand, the Republican leaders were glad of an opportunity to make an end of the corrupt and tragic farce of Reconstruction; to unload their party of a dead weight which had been burdensome and was growing dangerous; mayhap to punish their Southern agents who had demanded so much for doctoring the returns and making an exhibit in favor of Hayes.
VII
Mr. Tilden accepted the result with equanimity. “I was at his house,” says John Bigelow, “when his exclusion was announced to him, and also on the fourth of March when Mr. Hayes was inaugurated, and it was impossible to remark any change in his manner, except perhaps that he was less absorbed than usual and more interested in current affairs.” His was an intensely serious mind; and he had come to regard the Presidency as rather a burden to be borne--an opportunity for public usefulness--involving a life of constant toil and care, than as an occasion for personal exploitation and rejoicing.
However much of captivation the idea of the Presidency may have had for him when he was first named for the office, I cannot say, for he was as unexultant in the moment of victory as he was unsubdued in the hour of defeat; but it is certainly true that he gave no sign of disappointment to any of his friends. He lived nearly ten years longer, at Greystone, in a noble homestead he had purchased for himself overlooking the Hudson River, the same ideal life of the scholar and gentleman that he had passed in Gramercy Park.
Looking back over these untoward and sometimes mystifying events, I have often asked myself: Was it possible, with the elements what they were, and he himself what he was, to seat Mr. Tilden in the office to which he had been elected? The missing ingredient in a character intellectually and morally great, and a personality far from unimpressive, was the touch of the dramatic discoverable in most of the leaders of men: even in such leaders as William of Orange and Louis the XI, as Cromwell and Washington.
There was nothing spectacular about Mr. Tilden. Not wanting the sense of humor, he seldom indulged it. In spite of his positiveness of opinion and amplitude of knowledge, he was always courteous and deferential in debate. He had none of the audacious daring, let us say, of Mr. Blaine, the energetic self-assertion of Mr. Roosevelt. Either, in his place, would have carried all before him.
It would be hard to find a character farther from that of a subtle schemer--sitting behind his screen and pulling his wires--which his political and party enemies discovered him to be as soon as he began to get in the way of the Machine and obstruct the march of the self-elect. His confidences were not effusive nor their subjects numerous. His deliberation was unfailing, and sometimes it carried the idea of indecision, not to say actual love of procrastination. But in my experience with him I found that he usually ended where he began, and it was nowise difficult for those whom he trusted to divine the bias of his mind where he thought it best to reserve its conclusions. I do not think that in any great affair he ever hesitated longer than the gravity of the case required of a prudent man, or that he had a preference for delays, or that he clung over-tenaciously to both horns of the dilemma, as his professional training and instinct might lead him to do, and did certainly expose him to the accusation of doing.
He was a philosopher and took the world as he found it. He rarely complained and never inveighed. He had a discriminating way of balancing men’s good and bad qualities and of giving each the benefit of a generous accounting, and a just way of expecting no more of a man than it was in him to yield. As he got into deeper water his stature rose to its level, and, from his exclusion from the Presidency in 1877 to his renunciation of public affairs in 1884 and his death in 1886, his walks and ways might have been a study for all who would learn life’s truest lessons and know the real sources of honor, happiness, and fame.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH
BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
Author of “The Bread-Line,” “Elizabeth,” “Mark Twain: A Biography,” etc.
Then, it being no use to try, Carringford let the hand holding the
## book drop into his lap and from his lap to his side. His eyes stared
grimly into the fire, which was dropping to embers.
“I suppose I’m getting old,” he said; “that’s the reason. The books are as good as ever they were--the old ones, at any rate. Only they don’t interest me any more. It’s because I don’t believe in them as I did. I see through them all. I begin taking them to pieces as soon as I begin to read, and of course romance and glamour won’t stand dissection. Yes, it’s because I’m getting old; that’s it. Those things go with youth. Why, I remember when I would give up a dinner for a new book, when a fresh magazine gave me a positive thrill. I lost that somewhere, somehow; I wonder why. It is a ghastly loss. If I had to live my life over, I would at least try not to destroy my faith in books. It seems to me now just about the one thing worth keeping for old age.”
The book slipped from the hand hanging at his side. The embers broke, and, falling together, sent up a tongue of renewed flame. Carringford’s mind was slipping into by-paths.
“If one only might live his life over!” he muttered. “If one might be young again!”
He was not thinking of books now. A procession of ifs had come filing out of the past--a sequence of opportunities where, with the privilege of choice, he had chosen the wrong, the irrevocable thing.
“If one only might try again!” he whispered. “If one only might! Good God!” Something like a soft footfall on the rug caused him to turn suddenly. “I beg your pardon,” he said, rising, “I did not hear you. I was dreaming, I suppose.”
A man stood before him, apparently a stranger.
“I came quietly,” he said. “I did not wish to break in upon your thought. It interested me, and I felt that I--might be of help.”
Carringford was trying to recall the man’s face,--a studious, clean-shaven face,--to associate it and the black-garbed, slender figure with a name. So many frequented his apartment, congenial, idle fellows who came and went, and brought their friends if they liked, that Carringford was not surprised to be confronted by one he could not place. He was about to extend his hand, confessing a lack of memory, when his visitor spoke again.
“No,” he said in a gentle, composed voice, “you would not know it if you heard it. I have never been here before. I should not have come now only that, as I was passing below, I heard you thinking you would like to be young again--to live your life over, as they say.”
Carringford stared a moment or two at the smooth, clean-cut features and slender, black figure of his visitor before replying. He was used to many curious things, and not many things surprised him.
“I beg your pardon,” he repeated, “you mentioned, I believe, that you heard me thinking as you were passing on the street below?”
The slender man in black bowed.
“Wishing that you might be young again, that you might have another try at the game of life. I believe that was the exact thought.”
“And, may I ask, is it your habit to hear persons think?”
“When their thoughts interest me, yes, as one might overhear an interesting conversation.”
Carringford had slipped back into his chair and motioned his guest to another. Wizard or unbalanced, he was likely to prove a diversion. When the cigars were pushed in his direction, he took one, lighted it, and smoked silently. Carringford smoked, too, and looked into the fire.
“You were saying,” he began presently, “that you pick up interesting thought-currents as one might overhear bits of conversation. I suppose you find the process quite as simple as hearing in the ordinary way. Only it seems a little--well, unusual. Of course that is only my opinion.”
The slender man in black assented with a slight nod.
“The faculty is not unusual; it is universal. It is only undeveloped, uncontrolled, as yet. It was the same with electricity a generation ago. Now it has become our most useful servant.”
Carringford gave his visitor an intent look. This did not seem the inconsequential phrasing of an addled brain.
“You interest me,” he said. “Of course I have heard a good deal of such things, and all of us have had manifestations; but I think I have never before met any one who was able to control--to demonstrate, if you will--this particular force. It is a sort of mental wireless, I suppose--wordless, if you will permit the term.”
“Yes, the true wireless, the thing we are approaching--speech of mind to mind. Our minds are easily attuned to waves of mutual interest. When one vibrates, another in the same wave will answer to it. We are just musical instruments: a chord struck on the piano answers on the attuned harp. Any strong mutual interest forms the key-note of mental harmonic vibration. We need only develop the mental ear to hear, the mental eye to see.”
The look of weariness returned to Carringford’s face. These were trite, familiar phrases.
“I seem to have heard most of those things before,” he said. Then, as his guest smoked silently, he added, “I am only wondering how it came that my thought of the past and its hopelessness should have struck a chord or key-note which would send you up my stair.”
The slender, black figure rose and took a turn across the room, pausing in front of Carringford.
“You were saying as I passed your door that you would live your life over if you could. You were thinking: ‘If one might be young again! If one only might try again! If only one might!’ That was your thought, I believe.”
Carringford nodded.
“That was my thought,” he said, “through whatever magic you came by it.”
“And may I ask if there was a genuine desire behind that thought? Did you mean that you would indeed live your life over if you could? That, if the opportunity were given to tread the backward way to a new beginning, you would accept it?”
There was an intensity of interest in the man’s quiet voice, an eager gleam in his half-closed eyes, a hovering expectancy in the attitude of the slender, black figure. Carringford had the feeling of having been swept backward into a time of sorcery and incantation. He vaguely wondered if he had not fallen asleep. Well, he would follow the dream through.
“Yes, I would live my life over if I could,” he said. “I have made a poor mess of it this time. I could play the game better, I know, if the Fates would but deal me a new hand. If I could start young again, with all the opportunities of youth, I would not so often choose the poorer thing.”
The long, white fingers of Carringford’s guest had slipped into his waistcoat pocket. They now drew forth a small, bright object and held it to the light. Carringford saw that it was a vial, filled with a clear, golden liquid that shimmered and quivered in the light and was never still. Its possessor regarded it for a moment through half-closed lashes, then placed it on a table under the lamp, where it continued to glint and tremble.
Carringford watched it, fascinated, half hypnotized by the marvel of its gleam. Surely there was magic in this. The man was an alchemist, a sort of reincarnation from some forgotten day.
Carringford’s guest also watched the vial. The room seemed to have grown very still. Then after a time his thin lips parted.
“If you are really willing to admit failure,” he began slowly, carefully selecting each word, “if behind your wish there lies a sincere desire to go back to youth and begin life over, if that desire is strong enough to grow into a purpose, if you are ready to make the experiment, there you will find the means. That vial contains the very essence of vitality, the true elixir of youth. It is not a magic philter, as I see by your thought you believe. There is no magic. Whatever is, belongs to science. I am not a necromancer, but a scientist. From boyhood my study has been to solve the subtler secrets of life. I have solved many such. I have solved at last the secret of life itself. It is contained in that golden vial, an elixir to renew the tissues, to repair the cells, of the wasting body. Taken as I direct, you will no longer grow old, but young. The gray in your hair will vanish, the lines will smooth out of your face, your step will become buoyant, your pulses quick, your heart will sing with youth.” The speaker paused a moment, and his gray eyes rested on Carringford and seemed probing his very soul.
“It will take a little time,” he went on; “for as the natural processes of decay are not rapid, the natural restoration may not be hurried. You can go back to where you will, even to early youth, and so begin over, if it is your wish. Are you willing to make the experiment? If you are, I will place the means in your hands.”
While his visitor had been speaking, Carringford had been completely absorbed, filled with strange emotions, too amazed, too confused for utterance.