"MY DEAR GOVERNOR,--Your favor of the 8th was this morning received. It is hardly necessary for me to say that I thank you most sincerely for your very kind offer of a position on your staff with rank of Brigadier-General. But I feel constrained to decline for two principal reasons: 1st, I have no taste whatever, but rather an aversion, for military display, and could not persuade myself to appear in uniform on occasion; and I never want to take my position without doing the full duty pertaining to it. 2d, if I were to accept I might lay myself open to the suspicion or charge that while I had recommended a fellow-citizen for position necessary to serve you that I should accept, the case would be different, and I would be willing to yield my own preferences and meet the suggested thoughts of others. But I feel that by declining I enable you to give the place to some one of the many seekers after it, who have a taste for and will be glad to get it. I appreciate your reasons for declining to appoint the gentleman recommended by me, and if I were in your place I would have no one about me tainted with Hoffmanism in any way. "Yours, &c., "WM. PURCELL." GOVERNOR TILDEN TO JOHN KELLY "ALBANY, _Feb'y 28, 1875_. "My dear Sir,--Your note came this morning, and it finds me in a moment of comparative leisure which I have scarcely had for weeks, so I avail myself of the indisposition to do anything more serious to reply. "You need not be disgusted by the awkward accident about McLaughlin, for, tho a little ridiculous, it is not serious; as I had all the elements of decision I acted at once to avoid the competition which so attractive an office was sure to cause. You will, no doubt, be surprised if I say that I acted in this case with no more celerity than I have with three-quarters of the important appointments, and nearly all the small ones which I have had to deal with. For the grumble at my delays has no doubt reached you. "A small coterie of rogues, who, when they first recovered from the subduing effect of the election, started into a life of whispers, first circulated the rumor that I had a softening of the brain; next, that I had suffered a stroke of paralysis; then, that I went to bed drunk every night; and at last came to the statement that I had lost my 'snap'--that I had not decision or energy to make proper removals or appointments, and, indeed, had become physically unable to make up my mind about anything.