IN his eulogium upon President Garfield, Mr. Blaine touched with impressive emphasis upon the rapidity with which honors came to him. Within six years after Williams College had sent Garfield forth equipped, "he was successively president of a college, State Senator of Ohio, Major-General of the Army of the United States, and a Representative-elect to the national Congress. A combination of honors so varied, so elevated, within a period so brief and to a man so young, is without precedent or parallel in the history of the country."

Those whose privilege it was to hear that matchless eulogy will not forget the meaning glance with which Mr. Blaine, lifting his eyes from his manuscript, swept that splendid company before him, the President and his Cabinet, the Justices of the Supreme Court, in their silken robes, the deliberate Senate and impetuous House, and the remaining distinguished heroes of the war, in brilliant uniform, as though saying to them, "You at least can understand how wonderful a thing it is to so speedily gain such honors as these." Yet before the echoes of this eulogy had ceased, a political career had been begun which was to be more marvellous in its successes and the celerity of its successive achievements than that of Garfield. Within ten years after Mr. Blaine pronounced this eulogy, a man then unknown beyond the city in which he lived had been chosen Governor of New York by a plurality unparalleled in the history of any State; had stepped from that office before its term was ended to the chair of the Chief Executive of the nation, and had again been elected to the presidency; and elected the second time while a private citizen—an unmatched political honor.

The swiftly succeeding successes of

Garfield are no longer unparalleled and unprecedented; that distinction is now Grover Cleveland's. Carrying a torch as a private in evening campaign processions in 1880, he was to be four years later the successful presidential candidate of his party. He had gained no distinction for subtle or extraordinary strategy; he had not sat as a member in a legislative hall; his name had been associated with no important measure conceived and executed for public good; not of social inclination, not greatly learned, possessing no wide acquaintance, and having somewhat limited experience, he, nevertheless, revealed himself to the American people within the short space of two years as a man of extraordinary personal force, the quality of which is a puzzling mystery, which men of intellectual power seem to find a fascination in trying to analyze.

What is this mysterious and impressive quality? We may tell its manifestations; its influence has made history.

"What is it that is so impressive and overwhelming about your friend Governor Cleveland?" said a distinguished politician to the late Daniel Manning, at a time when Mr. Manning was with great skill directing the politics that had Cleveland's first presidential nomination in view.

"I do not know what it is, but I know that it is there," was Mr. Manning's reply.

ity which has made him able to hold the politicians of his party in the hollow of his hand, to defy political conventionalities, to break down machines, and, above all, to gain the confidence of the American people. This personal quality, which has given him these victories, he seems to have furnished no hint of in his childhood or youth. Before he came to his majority he must have led an unimpressive life, for those who knew him in those early days have no anecdote to tell of him which suggests that anything he did or said was of uncommon quality.

whose advantage in beginning life had been much greater than his. He passed swiftly from the ranks of the poor lawstudent to the companionship of such men.

When young Bissell, fresh from his successful career at Yale College, blessed with some wealth, and possessing all the advantages which gentle social relations give, returned to Buffalo from his college life, one of his closest intimacies was developed with Grover Cleveland. Mr. Folsom, one of the brightest men at the Buffalo bar, must have been early impressed

by this quality of Cleveland's, for he took the young man into partnership, and before Cleveland was thirty years of age he had established, with men of intellectual power, a standing not due to unusual mental gifts, but to this same personal quality which has made him conspicuous above other Americans for the past twelve years.

In 1884, after Mr. Cleveland's nomination for the presidency, President Arthur was asked if he knew the man whom the Democratic party had nominated.

"I know him slightly, and have heard much of him," was the President's reply. "I know that he is a good companion among the rather worldly men at the Buffalo bar, or was when he was there; but I also know this of him he is a man of splendid moral fibre, and I have been told that his fidelity to his convictions and professional duties is regarded by his associates at the Buffalo bar as something wonderful. I do not think that he is a man of strong, original mind, but he is the faithfullest man to what he believes to be right and his duty that his party has at least in New York State."

Roscoe Conkling, not long after Mr. Cleveland's nomination, was asked if he knew the Democratic candidate, and Mr. Conkling replied, with more of emphasis than he was accustomed to employ in speaking of any public man at that time:

"I do not know much about Mr. Cleveland as a politician, but my impression is that he is no politician, as the word is commonly understood. But I do know this about him. As a lawyer he prepares his cases well, as thoroughly, perhaps, as any man whom I have known in my practice."

Mr. Manning said, after he had retired from Mr. Cleveland's cabinet:

"Whatever may be said of the President as to his relations with the politicians, this much must be said, that he has never done anything since he has been in the White House for any selfish, personal motive, and that he is the most conscientious man in his adherence to what he believes to be his duty, and in his attempts to make out his duty when he is not entirely clear about it, that I have ever seen;

and I do not believe any President has ever exceeded him in these respects."

One of the greater powers in one of the greatest railway systems of the United States, not long ago meeting a company of friends at a private dinner in the Union League Club, sat for some time listening to the very interesting and acute analyses of Cleveland which were made by many brilliant men who were in that party.

This railway prince, for that word justly describes him, at last said:

I re

"I do not think any of you has touched upon what is, after all, the quality which has made Mr. Cleveland what he is in American politics. I had some reason to know wherein his power lies, at a time when he probably had no other thought of his future than the expectation of earning a competence at the bar. It so happened that I was associated with certain litigations in which Mr. Cleveland was employed as counsel. He was not employed either for or against the interests which I represented, for they were merely incidental to these suits. I was amazed, after a little experience with him, to see the way in which he worked. I thought I had seen hard work and patient fidelity, but I never saw a lawyer so patient and so faithful to his clients as Cleveland was. member speaking about it to an eminent lawyer who has since become a judge, and he told me that Grover Cleveland was the most conscientious man in his relations with his clients that he had ever met. I spoke of it to somebody else, and that man told me that Cleveland had once actually lost. a case by over-conscientiousness and too thorough preparation. He had examined his witnesses so persistently and exhaustively in private, and had pursued the case in all its details with such supreme drudgery, that when his witnesses went upon the stand their testimony seemed to the jury to be almost parrot-like; to be so glib, so perfectly consistent, that it seemed as though there must be a weakness in the case, and that such perfection must have come from rehearsals. For that reason the jury decided against him,