At the time of Curtis’s defection from the Republican party incredible abuse was showered on him, not only in the press but through anonymous letters. He was much saddened by it, less from the personal point of view than because of the revelation it gave of the meanness and vindictiveness of human nature. Having thought too well of his fellows, he suffered under the disillusionment, all of which goes to show how optimistic at heart this disciple of Thackeray and writer of satires was. And when Senator Conkling made a savage personal attack on him in the New York State convention of 1877, Curtis seems to have had no feeling towards his enemy but that of pity: ‘It was the saddest sight I ever knew, that man glaring at me in a fury of hate and storming out his foolish blackguardism.’ If Curtis’s career illustrates one thing above another, it is his willingness to sacrifice mental ease and personal comfort for an ideal. But the sacrifice was made with such good nature, such grace in the acquiescence, that one forgets its extent, and even makes the mistake of thinking that possibly it cost him little. Undoubtedly it cost him much, this giving up of literature for politics, this putting aside of all public honors because there was a nearer duty which could not be neglected. III THE WRITER AND THE ORATOR The author of _Nile Notes of a Howadji_ loved alliteration. In his early books he amused himself with pleasant arrangements of words such as ‘camels with calm, contemptuous eyes,’ or ‘lustrous leaves languidly moving,’ or ‘slim minarets spiring silverly and strangely from the undefined mass of mud houses.’ Note this description of the date-palm: ‘Plumed as a prince and graceful as a gentleman, stands the date; and whoever travels among palms travels in good society;’ or this of the sakias: ‘Like huge summer insects they doze upon the bank, droning a melancholy, monotonous song. The slow, sad sound pervades the land--one calls to another, and he sighs to his neighbor, and the Nile is shored with sound no less than sand.’ Alliteration is a mark of youth. Employed to excess it has a cloying effect, like that of diminished sevenths in music. Of minor rhetorical arts it is the poorest, the most seductive, the most readily abused. But we should miss it sadly from the ‘Howadji’ books. Removed from the context these phrases quoted have an artificial sound, in their place they blend perfectly. Curtis’s style grew less florid and sensuous after the early writings. At all times it is singularly easy. One gets the impression that he was a spontaneous writer. Great productivity is not possible when there must be a constant retouching of phrases and paragraphs. The unlabored nature of his writing may explain the light estimate Curtis put on it. He is said to have been quite unwilling to reprint a volume of essays from the ‘Easy Chair.’ That anything which came with so little effort could be worth re-reading seemed not to occur to him.