I have often alluded to this result as an answer to those who say that speaking produces no real effect on the convictions of men regarding party matters. Some speaking does not, but there is a kind of speaking which does, and of this were these two masterpieces, so different from each other in matter and manner, and yet converging upon the same points, intellectual and moral. Before I close regarding Garfield, it may be well to give a few more recollections of him. The meeting ended, we drove to my house on the university grounds, and shortly before our arrival he asked me, ``How did you like my speech?'' I answered: ``Garfield, I have known you too long and think too highly of you to flatter you; but I will simply say what I would say under oath: it was the best speech I ever heard. ``This utterance of mine was deliberate, expressing my conviction, and he was evidently pleased with it. Having settled down in front of the fire in my library, we began to discuss the political situation, and his talk remains to me among the most interesting things of my life. He said much regarding the history of the currency question and his relations to it, and from this ran rapidly and suggestively through a multitude of other questions and the relations of public men to them. One thing which struck me was his judicially fair and even kindly estimates of men who differed from him. Very rarely did he speak harshly or sharply of any one, differing in this greatly from Mr. Conkling, who, in all his conversations, and especially in one at that same house not long before, seemed to consider men who differed from him as enemies of the human race. Under Mr. Hayes, the successor of General Grant in the Presidency, I served first as a commissioner at the Paris Exposition, and then as minister to Germany. Both these services will be discussed in the chapters relating to my diplomatic life, but I may refer briefly to my acquaintance with him at this period. I had met him but once previously, and that was during his membership of Congress when he came to enter his son at Cornell. I had then been most favorably impressed by his large, sincere, manly way. On visiting Washington to receive my instructions before going to Berlin, I saw him several times, and at each meeting my respect for him was increased. Driving to Arlington, walking among the soldiers' graves there, standing in the portico of General Lee's former residence, and viewing from the terrace the Capitol in the distance, he spoke very nobly of the history we had both personally known, of the sacrifices it had required, and of the duties which it now imposed. At his dinner- table I heard him discuss with his Secretary of State, Mr. Evarts, a very interesting question--the advisability of giving members of the cabinet seats in the Senate and House of Representatives, as had been arranged in the constitution of the so-called Confederate States; but of this I shall speak in another chapter.