It was the first time that the old pioneer had taken "the back trail" since leaving Boston, nearly fifty years before, and I rejoiced in his decision. The thought of leading him into the halls of Congress and pointing out for him the orators whose doings had been so long his chief concern, was pleasureable to me. From my earliest childhood I had heard him comment on the weekly record of Congressional debates. He loved oratory. He was a hero-worshiper. With him the Capitol meant Lincoln and Grant and Blaine and Sherman. It was not a city, it was a shrine. When he stepped from the train in Washington the following week, I was there to meet him, and for several days I led him from splendor to splendor. With me he saw Mount Vernon, the White House, Congress, the library, and his patriotism intensified as the glories of his country's capital unrolled before his eyes. He said little, only looked, and when he had harvested as much of Washington as he could carry I took him to Philadelphia, in order that he might breathe the air of Continental Hall and gaze upon its sacred Liberty Bell. His patriotism had few reservations. All these relics were of high solemnity to him. At last as a climax we approached New York, whose glittering bays, innumerable ships and monstrous buildings awed him and saddened him. It was a picture at once incredible and familiar, resembling illustrations he had seen in the magazines, only mightier more magnificent than he had imagined any of it to be. It overwhelmed him, wearied him, disheartened him, and so it came about that the quiet dinners he took with me at my club were his most enduring pleasures, for there he rested, there he saw me at home. He acquired an understanding of my endurance of the vast and terrible town. Up to this time the story of my doings in the East had been to him like those of characters in highly-colored romance. He had believed me (in a sense) when, in West Salem, I had spoken of meetings with Roosevelt and Howells and other famous men, and yet, till now, he had never been able to realize the fact that I _belonged_ in New York, and that men of large affairs were actually my friends. He comprehended now (in some degree) my good fortune, and it gratified him while it daunted him. He understood why I could not live in West Salem. If he was proud to acknowledge me as a son, I, on my part, was proud to acknowledge him as my father, for as he sat with me in the dining-room of the club or walked about the Library to examine the relics and portraits of Booth (for whom he had a passionate admiration) he was altogether admirable. At the end of our third day, I suggested Boston. To this he replied, "No, I've had enough," and there was a tired droop in his voice. "I'm ready to go home. I'm all tired out with 'seeing things,' and besides it's time to be getting back to my garden."