At a time when the financial clouds were gathering last spring, a little company of politicians, who were personal friends as well, called upon Mr. Cleveland by appointment, and were received in that upper chamber through which for many days a persistent procession filed before the President asking for office. Mr. Cleveland planted himself firmly for an instant before each supplicant, so firmly that it almost seemed to these friends of his standing a little way off that his determination to be persuaded by no appeal to emotion, gratitude, friendship, or by any other thing than fitness revealed itself even in the rigidness of the muscles of his body. Patiently listening to each request and making perfunctory response, the President then received the next and then the next, and no man of all that number who thus met him knew whether his plea had met with favor or refusal. At last the throng was gone, the doors were closed, and there came to the face of the President a strange, hard look, tinged with something of surprise, and turning to his friends who remained he threw himself wearily into his chair and was silent for a moment. When he spoke there was something of sadness, something of reproach, in his tone and manner, and he said: “You have seen a picture which I see every day, and you may now know why it is that my ears must be deaf to such appeals; why I scarcely hear the words they speak; why I almost fear that with most men who seek with great persistence political office the sense of truth is apt to be blunted, and why, therefore, it is imperative for me to be always suspicious.” Then the President added, with something of indignation: “But how any man who is a good citizen can come to me now and plead for office, when there is impending financial calamity, I cannot understand. Politics! Is it possible that the politicians do not see that the best as well as the imperative politics now is that which will bring the country back to financial prosperity?” Some hours later, one of that company had another glimpse of the President. Washington was still for the night. The White House was dark, excepting for a light that burned in the room where the President works. At his desk sat the man who had said in the morning that his ears were deaf to the office-seekers’ appeals, and yet with patient drudgery he was now examining the indorsements and recommendations of the different applicants, as he had been doing for hours. Then, taking up his pen, he began to write. The pen seemed scarcely ever to stop, and, watching through the partly opened door that led into an outer office, the President’s friend was reminded by it of something which he had read or heard. “Where have I heard or seen something which that sight brings to my memory?” he asked himself. The impression remained with him after he left Washington, until at last, taking down from his library shelf a biography, he read this passage: