In Grover Cleveland a total stranger had arrived at the front of affairs. The Democrats, after a rule of more than half a century, had been out of power twenty-four years. They could scarce realize at first that they were again in power. The new chieftain proved more of an unknown quantity than had been suspected. William Dorsheimer, a life-long crony, had brought the two of us together before Cleveland's election to the governorship of the Empire State as one of a group of attractive Buffalo men, most of whom might be said to have been cronies of mine, Buffalo being a delightful halfway stop-over in my frequent migrations between Kentucky and the Eastern seaboard. As in the end we came to a parting of the ways I want to write of Mr. Cleveland as a historian and not as a critic. He said to Mr. Carlisle after one of our occasional tiffs: "Henry will never like me until God makes me over again." The next time we met, referring to this, I said: "Mr. President, I like you very much--very much indeed--but sometimes I don't like some of your ways." There were in point of fact two Clevelands--before marriage and after marriage--the intermediate Cleveland rather unequal and indeterminate. Assuredly no one of his predecessors had entered the White House so wholly ignorant of public men and national affairs. Stories used to be told assigning to Zachary Taylor this equivocal distinction. But General Taylor had grown up in the army and advanced in the military service to a chief command, was more or less familiar with the party leaders of his time, and was by heredity a gentleman. The same was measurably true of Grant. Cleveland confessed himself to have had no social training, and he literally knew nobody. Five or six weeks after his inauguration I went to Washington to ask a diplomatic appointment for my friend, Boyd Winchester. Ill health had cut short a promising career in Congress, but Mr. Winchester was now well on to recovery, and there seemed no reason why he should not and did not stand in the line of preferment. My experience may be worth recording because it is illustrative. In my quest I had not thought of going beyond Mr. Bayard, the new Secretary of State. I did go to him, but the matter seemed to make no headway. There appeared a hitch somewhere. It had not crossed my mind that it might be the President himself. What did the President know or care about foreign appointments? He said to me on a Saturday when I was introducing a party of Kentucky friends: "Come up to-morrow for luncheon. Come early, for Rose"--his sister, for the time being mistress of the White House--"will be at church and we can have an old-fashioned talk-it-out." The next day we passed the forenoon together. He was full of homely and often whimsical talk. He told me he had not yet realized what had happened to him. "Sometimes," he said, "I wake at night and rub my eyes and wonder if it is not all a dream."