As to the first, President Cleveland was kind enough to write me an autograph letter asking whether I would accept one of the positions on the new Interstate Railway Commission. I felt it a great honor to be asked to act as colleague with such men as Chief Justice Cooley, Mr. Morrison, and others already upon that board, but I recognized my own incompetence to discharge the duties of such a position properly. Though I had been, some years before, a director in two of the largest railway corporations in the United States, my heart was never in that duty, and I never prepared myself to discharge it. Thinking the matter over fully, I felt obliged to decline the place. My heart was set on finishing the book which I had so long wished to publish,--my ``History of the Warfare of Science with Theology,''--and in order to cut myself off from other work and get some needed rest I sailed for Europe on October 3, 1885, but while engaged most delightfully in visits to Oxford, Cambridge, and various places on the Continent, I received by cable an offer which had also a very tempting side. It was sent by my old friend Mr. Henry Sage of Ithaca, urged me to accept the nomination to Congress from that district, and assured me that the nomination was equivalent to an election. There were some reasons why such a position was attractive to me, but the more I thought of it the more it seemed to me that to discharge these duties properly would take me from other work to which I was pledged. Before deciding the question, however, I determined to consult two old friends who were then living in London hotels adjacent to my own. The first of these was my dear old instructor, with whom my relations had been of the kindest ever since my first year at Yale--President Porter. On my laying the matter before him, he said, ``Accept by all means''; but as I showed him the reasons on both sides, he at last reluctantly agreed with me that probably it was best to send a declination. The other person consulted was Mr. James Belden of Syracuse, afterward a member of Congress from the Onondaga district, a politician who had a most intimate knowledge of men and affairs in our State. We had been during a long period, political adversaries, but I had come to respect sundry qualities he had more lately exhibited, and therefore went to him as a practical man and laid the case before him. He expressed his great surprise that I should advise with him, my old political adversary, but he said, ``Since you do come, I will give you the very best advice I can.'' We then went over the case together, and I feel sure that he advised me as well as the oldest of my friends could have done, and with a shrewdness and foresight all his own.