With all his capacity for making sober estimates, and escaping the illusions by which many minds are carried away, he was yet an enthusiast, especially in respect to the plans and enterprises which were the offspring of his own fruitful brain. This came partly from personal vanity, of which he had a plentiful supply, and partly from the exhilaration which attends the exercise of high intellectual powers and rewards the conquest of difficulties. I remember a display of this tendency which greatly impressed me. In the performance of a professional service for him while he was Governor, in connection with a lawsuit to which he was a party, it became necessary that I should tarry several days at his house in Albany in order to secure his attention during the intervals between his official duties. It was while the St. Louis Convention was in session at which he was nominated for the Presidency. One would suppose that under such circumstances he could have given his mind to little else than the business in which his personal fortunes were so deeply concerned. But he could not have devoted himself more ardently to recalling and arranging the facts of the complicated transactions out of which this lawsuit grew than he did on the very day when he was nominated. Late in the afternoon of that day, after protracted work, he took me upon a long drive with him. In the course of it he did not even allude to the convention, or its doings, although a flight of telegrams had been coming to him. His conversation, animated and incessant, was upon false policies in government, the mischiefs and burdens of over-expenditure, the true principles of taxation, the errors of protective tariffs, etc. One could see that the mere matter of holding the Presidential office was little to him; but that the chance of laying his reforming hand upon the multitude of abuses with which, as he supposed, the whole administration of the general government was infested aroused his enthusiasm, as the prospect of a season of sport would that of a boy. Becoming animated with his theme, eloquent and intense in his language, he failed in attention to the high-spirited horse he was driving, and I was in constant fear of a catastrophe. Indeed, on a similar drive the succeeding day we met with one from the same cause. The injury was inflicted instead of received, and cost the Governor several thousand dollars by way of damages. When, on our return, on the day first mentioned, we were near home, I observed to him that he would perhaps find at the house a telegram announcing his nomination. "No," said he, unconcernedly, "not until about half-past nine." It came not many moments from that time. Impressed upon this occasion with his profound and extensive knowledge of everything relating to the science of government, and thinking his views not substantially at variance with those held by leading Republicans--for at that time the Republican party had not become committed to its