"MY DEAR SIR,--I shall regret it extremely if you cannot extricate yourself from the embarrassments which you mention and I appreciate; and yet come to the convention, if not as a delegate, at least as an outsider. Such an occasion will not be likely to occur in your time or mine, and ought we not seize it to do something of real value to our four millions of people and to pay the debt which Lord Coke says a lawyer owes to his profession? "I have often thought and talked of you as eminently suitable to take a part in the reconstructed court, but have heard that you were not ready to sacrifice the large gains of your professional career. You are over-modest in the suggestion of one or two friends desiring you to come to a different conclusion; for I have talked with a large number who looked to you, and whose motives cannot be imputed as mere friendship, but spring from a sense of public utility, in securing to the public service your abilities and independent integrity. Indeed, Grover told me some time ago that he would not be a candidate if you would be; and I think the same concession would have been generally made, at least at an earlier day. "With respect to myself, I cannot reconcile myself to the idea of being tied up for a series of years. I prefer freedom and a period of relaxation to any honors which involve permanent and laborious duties. In December, and repeatedly since, the suggestion from Albany has been made to me that I might have a general support from that and this part of the State for chief, in which those not supposed to be the most friendly would concur, and a considerable number of similar tenders have come to me from other quarters; but to all, by letter and verbally, and among others to Cassidy, each, and Allen--and to Comstock, who is an affirmatively [_sic_] candidate, to Kernan and O'Conor--I have stated my purpose, and I have no disposition to change it. It is not that I undervalue these great trusts, but I am content that they go to those to whose more robust natures and physical vigor the same considerations which influence me are not applicable, and to those in whose peculiar condition they are an object of laudable ambition. If I can help to get a good selection, and then to elect the ticket, I shall consider myself as concentrating in a few days all the public service I could perform in the whole 14 years; and so having completely acquitted myself to my day and generation, become entitled to a play spell.