Thus far it has weathered each historic danger which has gone before to mark the decline and fall of nations; the struggle for existence; the foreign invasion; the internecine strife; the disputed succession; religious bigotry and racial conflict. One other peril confronts it—the demoralization of wealth and luxury; too great prosperity; the concentration and the abuse of power. Shall we survive the lures with which the spirit of evil, playing upon our self-love, seeks to trip our wayward footsteps, purse-pride and party spirit, mistaken zeal and perverted religion, fanaticism seeking to abridge liberty and liberty running to license, greed masquerading as a patriot and ambition making a commodity of glory—or under the process of a divine evolution shall we be able to mount and ride the waves which swallowed the tribes of Israel, which engulfed the phalanxes of Greece and the legions of Rome, and which still beat the sides and sweep the decks of Europe? The one-party power we have escaped; the one-man power we have escaped. The stars in their courses fight for us; the virtue and intelligence of the people are still watchful and alert. Truth is mightier than ever, and justice, mounting guard even in the Hall of Statues, walks everywhere the battlements of freedom! Chapter the Twentieth The Real Grover Cleveland—Two Clevelands Before and After Marriage—A Correspondence and a Break of Personal Relations I There were, as I have said, two Grover Clevelands—before and after marriage—and, it might be added, between his defeat in 1888 and his election in 1892. He was so sure of his election in 1888 that he could not be induced to see the danger of the situation in his own State of New York, where David Bennett Hill, who had succeeded him in the governorship, was a candidate for reelection, and whom he personally detested, had become the ruling party force. He lost the State, and with it the election, while Hill won, and thereby arose an ugly faction fight. I did not believe as the quadrennial period approached in 1892 that Mr. Cleveland could be elected. I still think he owed his election, and Harrison his defeat, to the Homestead riots of the midsummer, which transferred the labor vote bodily from the Republicans to the Democrats. Mainly on account of this belief I opposed his nomination that year. In the Kentucky State Convention I made my opposition resonant, if not effective. “I understand,” I said in an address to the assembled delegates, “that you are all for Grover Cleveland?” There came an affirmative roar. “Well,” I continued, “I am not, and if you send me to the National Convention I will not vote for his nomination, if his be the only name presented, because I firmly believe that his nomination will mean the marching through a slaughter-house to an open grave, and I refuse to be party to such a folly.”