But just before the time for the senatorial election in Wisconsin, meeting a very bright and active-minded student of my senior class who came from that State, I asked him, ``What is the feeling among your people regarding the re<e:>lection of Senator Carpenter?'' My student immediately burst into a torrent of wrath and answered: ``The people of Wisconsin will send Mr. Carpenter back to the Senate by an enormous majority. We will see if a gang of newspaper blackguards can slander one of our senators out of public life.'' The result was as my young friend had foretold: Mr. Carpenter was triumphantly re<e:>lected. While I am on this subject I may refer, as a comfort to those who have found themselves unjustly attacked in political matters, to two other notable cases within my remembrance. Probably no such virulence has ever been known day after day, year after year, as was shown by sundry presses of large circulation in their attacks on William H. Seward. They represented him as shady and tricky; as the lowest of demagogues; as utterly without conscience or ability; as pretending a hostility to slavery which was simply a craving for popularity; they refused to report his speeches, or, if they did report them, distorted them. He had also incurred the displeasure of very many leaders of his own party, and of some of its most powerful presses, yet he advanced steadily from high position to high position, and won a lasting and most honorable place in the history of his country. The same may be said of Senator Conkling. The attacks on him in the press were bitter and almost universal; yet the only visible result was that he was re<e:>lected to the national Senate by an increased majority. To the catastrophe which some years later ended his political career, the onslaught by the newspapers contributed nothing; it resulted directly from the defects of his own great qualities and not at all from attacks made upon him from outside. Almost from the first moment of my acquaintance with Mr. Conkling, I had endeavored to interest him in the reform of the civil service, and at least, if this was not possible, to prevent his actively opposing it. In this sense I wrote him various letters. For a time they seemed successful; but at last, under these attacks, he broke all bounds and became the bitter opponent of the movement. In his powerful manner and sonorous voice he from time to time expressed his contempt for it. The most striking of his utterances on the subject was in one of the State conventions, which, being given in his deep, sonorous tones, ran much as follows: ``When Doctor-r-r Ja-a-awnson said that patr-r-riotism-m was the l-a-w-s-t r-r-refuge of a scoundr-r-rel, he ignor-r-red the enor-r-rmous possibilities of the word r-refa-awr-r-rm!''