During the following winter (1894-1895), at Florence Sorrento, and Palermo, my time was steadily given to my historical work; and having returned home and seen it through the press, I turned to another historical treatise which had been long deferred, and never did a man more thoroughly enjoy his leisure. I was at last apparently my own master, and could work in the midst of my books and in the library of the university to my heart's content. But this fair dream was soon brought to naught. In December, 1895, I was appointed by President Cleveland a member of the commission to decide upon the boundary line between the British possessions in South America and Venezuela. The circumstances of the case, with the manner in which he tendered me the position, forbade me to decline it, and I saw no more literary leisure during the following year. As the presidential campaign of 1896 approached I had given up all thoughts of politics, and had again resumed the historical work to which I proposed to devote, mainly, the rest of my life--the preparation of a biographical history of modern Germany, for which I had brought together a large amount of material and had prepared much manuscript. I also hoped to live long enough to put into shape for publication a series of lectures, on which I had obtained a mass of original material in France, upon ``The Causes of the French Revolution''; and had the new campaign been like any of those during the previous twenty years, it would not have interested me. But suddenly news came of the nomination by the Democrats of Mr. Bryan. The circumstances attending this showed clearly that the coming contest involved, distinctly, the question between the forces of virtual repudiation, supporting a policy which meant not merely national disaster but generations of dishonor on the one side, and, on the other, Mr. McKinley, supporting a policy of financial honesty. Having then been called upon to preside over a Republican meeting at Ithaca, I made a speech which was published and widely circulated, giving the reasons why all thinking men of both parties ought to rally in support of the Republican candidate, and this I followed with an open letter to many leading Democrats in the State. It was begun as a private letter to a valued Democratic friend, Mr. Oscar S. Straus, who has twice proved himself a most useful and patriotic minister of the United States at Constantinople. But, as my pen was moving, another Democratic friend came into my mind, then another, and again another, until finally my views were given in an open letter to them all; and this having been submitted to a friend in New York, with permission to use it as he thought best, he published it. The result seemed fortunate. It was at once caught up by the press and republished in all parts of the country. I cannot claim that the gentlemen to whom I wrote were influenced by it, but certain it is that in spite of their