"If you had filled an administration, the records of it would have marked your influence on the progress of the country, but you did not. "You must gather them, under your own supervision, collect, select, and arrange them, and give the general outline of your positions and purposes yourself. "It is what the French call, '_Memoirs pour Servir_.' There are many passages where autobiographical sketches will be very valuable. "You run this great risk of the future: that, while in one light your action after the election may be regarded as in the highest sense patriotic, in the other it may be said that your failure to be President was because of something you lacked. "It depends upon who your biographer may be. He must be well supplied with all materials, on your arrangement, and informed with your ideas. "The time that you may devote to this, will it not be the best use you can make of it? "Yours very truly, "WM. R. MARTIN." STILSON HUTCHINS TO TILDEN "WASHINGTON, _March 18, 1881_. "MR. TILDEN,--The article which I wrote and published in the _Post_ on the morning of the 4th of March, the day on which Mr. Hayes took his leave of his usurped office, you may not have seen, and hence I take the pains to cut it out and enclose it to you. I think few persons--not even your most intimate and immediate friends--have pursued the great fraud or denounced it with more consistency and pertinacity than myself. I have never forgotten for a moment, nor have I allowed an opportunity to pass, to remind the beneficiary or his supporters of the great wrong they have inflicted on the people and the country and the institutions which have endeared it to us. And yet, had you taken your seat, I do not suppose there was one of the four millions who worked for you who would have less to ask than myself. "With great respect and great regret, "Yours, "STILSON HUTCHINS." TILDEN TO HON. STILSON HUTCHINS "15 GRAMERCY PARK, NEW YORK, _March 26, 1881_. "MY DEAR SIR,--I had seen the article, a slip of which you have kindly sent me, and also another similar article of yours largely copied. "You are entitled to great credit for your faithful vindication of the rights of the Democratic party, and the interests of the people in respect to the election of 1876. "I never considered the question as at all personal to myself. It seemed to be a duty cast upon me by events to represent the public grievance until the Democratic party and the people had an opportunity to take the matter into their own hands. That duty was very onerous, and certain to be prolific of nothing but sacrifices; and though I would not retire from it, I was glad when it was completed, and I was discharged of responsibility for all consequences of the violation of the elective principle, whatever they made hereafter prove to be. Very truly yours, "S. J. TILDEN." J. S. BLACK TO TILDEN "BROCKIE, near YORK, PA., _April 5th, 1881_.