His interest in social work is shown in a hitherto unpublished letter written about this time to Mary Whitall Smith, who had married and gone to England, and who sent him accounts of the work being done among the poor of the East End through the agency of Toynbee Hall. Of this he writes at noon on the 20th of July, 1885: "The account of the Toynbee Hall doings and chat [is] deeply interesting to me. I think much of all genuine efforts of the human emotions, the soul and bodily and intellectual powers, to exploit themselves for humanity's good: the _efforts_ in themselves I mean (sometimes I am not sure but _they_ are the main matter)--without stopping to calculate whether the investment is tip-top in a business or statistical point of view. "These libations, ecstatic life-pourings as it were of precious wine or _rose-water_ on vast desert-sands or great polluted river--taking chances for returns _or no returns_--what were they (or are they) but the theory and practice of the beautiful God Christ? or of all Divine personality?"[675] FOOTNOTES: [652] _Comp. Prose_, 183, 186. [653] MSS. Diary; MSS. Berenson (_a_). [654] MSS. Berenson (_a_). [655] _Cf. In re_, 315. [656] Kennedy, 11; MSS. Diary. [657] _In re_, 45, 141, 382; and Johnston. [658] Donaldson, 69. [659] Carpenter (_a_), (_b_). [660] _Comp. Prose_, 247, 325; _Camb. Mod. Hist._, 707. [661] W. Cunningham, _Western Civilisation_ (ii.), 258-60. [662] _Camb. Mod. Hist._, 712; _En. Brit. Suppt._ [663] _Comp. Prose_, 215. [664] Kirkup, _Hist. of Socialism_, 286. [665] Marshall, _Principles of Economics_, 64. [666] Kirkup. [667] Morris and Bax, _Socialism_, 321. [668] Kirkup, 162. [669] See _supra_, 240. [670] _In re_, 379, 380; Carpenter (_b_), etc. [671] See _supra_, 277. [672] _In re_, 379. [673] MSS. Diary and Donaldson. [674] _L. of G._, 294; fuller in 1876 ed. [675] MSS. Berenson. CHAPTER XX AT MICKLE STREET The presidential election of the autumn of 1884 brought the long Republican _régime_ to an end. During the twenty-four years of its continuance the old party cries had become almost meaningless, and the parties themselves ineffective, while political life had grown increasingly corrupt from top to bottom.[676] The only practical demand of the hour was for a good government, and this required a change of party. Whitman, with a number of independent Republicans known as "Mugwumps," supported the Democrat, Mr. Grover Cleveland. With his return to the White House the South may be said to have returned to the Union, after a generation of bitter estrangement. In the following summer Whitman had a slight sun-stroke, which rendered walking much more difficult.[677] For several months he was a good deal confined to his little house, but his friends promptly came to the rescue with a horse and light American waggon.[678]