From the moment it became known that Samuel J. Tilden had been elected President of the United States, till Samuel J. Randall, Speaker of the House of Representatives, cutting the tie vote of that body, redeemed its pledge to abide by the decision of the Electoral Commission, which declared Rutherford B. Hayes President of the United States, forms one of the most thrilling periods in our political history. It was but eleven years after the great civil struggle, and people living to-day, when the sinews of the nation are again knitted, cannot easily estimate the bitterness engendered by the campaign that fell during our centennial year. The contest reached nothing less than a sublime climax when Randall, with nothing in his great form or his strong face to betray the struggle it had cost him, stepped quietly down from the Speaker's platform, and, taking his place on the floor of the House, uttered amid its breathless silence that affirmative syllable upon which hung national tranquillity. Both men took the oath of office,--Tilden, the people's choice, in the privacy of his own home in New York, and Hayes, twice, first, on Saturday afternoon, the 3d of March, in the White House, overlapping Grant's term of office by a few hours, that there might be no intermission occasioned by inauguration-day falling on Sunday; and again on Monday, the 5th of March, in the presence of the people. A Presidential campaign that proceeds and terminates in the usual way is sufficient to entail an enormous amount of publicity upon the candidates. The campaign of '76, however, gave Tilden both a prominence and a place in the affections of the people of his country that could scarcely have been greater had he been permitted to fill the high office to which they elected him. His bachelorhood was an interesting feature of his personality, for we had had at that time but one bachelor President. The sentimental side of public opinion was satisfied, however, with the report that he was soon to be married to Miss Hazeltine. On her part, though his admiration for her was easily apparent, she never referred to his having offered himself to her any more than she revealed the fact of any other man ever having honored her with a similar proposal. Yet it was known through men who could not easily disguise the sharpness of their disappointment at her rejection of their suit that she was continually the recipient of such offers. Though she was already well known socially, in both St. Louis and New York, her fame was established after the summers of 1876 and 1877 on a vastly wider basis. During the latter season she made a tour of the Eastern watering-places, and went for the first time to the Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs, succeeding Mattie Ould in its social leadership during the last days of the old _régime_, when it occupied the first rank as a distinctively Southern resort.