``At daylight next morning, while we were assembled in the tent making final arrangements, one of my aides, Colonel ----, heard a noise just outside, and, going out, saw this correspondent lying down at full length, his ear under the edge of the tent, and a note-book in his hand. Thereupon Colonel took the correspondent by his other ear, lifted him to his feet, and swore to him a solemn oath that if he was visible in any part of the camp more than five minutes longer, a detachment of troops would be ordered out to shoot him and bury him there in the swamp, so that no one would ever know his name or burial-place. ``The correspondent left at once,'' said the President, ``and he took his revenge by writing a history of the war from which he left me out.'' The same characteristic which I had found at other meetings with Grant came out even more strongly when, just before the close of his term, he made me a visit at Cornell, where one of his sons was a student. To meet him I invited several of our professors and others who were especially prejudiced against him, and, without exception, they afterward expressed the very feeling which had come over me after my first conversation with him-- surprise at the revelation of his quiet strength and his knowledge of public questions then before the country. During a walk on the university grounds he spoke to me of the Santo Domingo matter.[3] He said: ``The annexation question is doubtless laid aside for the present, but the time will come when the country will have occasion to regret that it was disposed of without adequate discussion. As I am so soon to leave the presidency, I may say to you now that one of my main thoughts in regard to the annexation of the island has been that it might afford a refuge for the negroes of the South in case anything like a war of races should ever arise in the old slave States.'' He then alluded to the bitter feeling between the two races which was then shown in the South, and which was leading many of the blacks to take refuge in Kansas and other northwestern States, and said, ``If such a refuge as Santo Domingo were open to them, their former masters would soon find that they have not the colored population entirely at their mercy, and would be obliged to compromise with them on far more just terms than would otherwise be likely.'' [3] See my chapter on Santo Domingo experiences. The President said this with evidently deep conviction, and it seemed to me a very thoughtful and far-sighted view of the possibilities and even probabilities involved. During another walk, in speaking of the approaching close of his second presidential term, he said that he found himself looking forward to it with the same longing which he had formerly had as a cadet at West Point when looking forward to a furlough.