It was after his first and, as it turned out, final defeat for the Presidency, in his earliest effort for the office, that his fame grew splendid. His campaigning was fascinating, and his speeches, as the years passed, took greater variety. In his tour when a candidate in 1884, his addresses were marvellous in aptitude and in a thousand felicities. There was much said of the fact that he was not a lawyer, and an affected superiority to him by gentlemen whose profession permitted "fees," and there was a system of deprecation to the effect that he only harangued, that he had neither originality nor grace. But after Garfield's death and the retirement of the Secretary from the Cabinet, he turned to writing history "as a resource," and his great work is of permanent value to the country, while his Garfield oration is one of the masterpieces of the highest rank; and there came straight from his brain two far-flashing ideas--that of the union of American nations, and to protect the policy of protection with reciprocity--and in the two there is the manifestation of that crowning glory of public life which enters the luminous atmosphere of immortality--statesmanship. That he had not the opportunity of the execution of these policies--of guiding and shaping their triumph--was not his fault but his fate. Their time may be coming but slowly, yet it surely will come. His zeal in behalf of making the protective principle irresistible by associating it intimately with reciprocity, was so strong that he grew impatient when others were tedious in comprehension; and there was a story of his concluding a sharp admonition to the laborers on the tariff schedules by "smashing his new silk hat on a steam-heater in the committee-room." He was asked by a friend who rode out with him to see the statue that he thought the most accurate and impressive of all the likenesses of Lincoln and was fond of driving to see, located in a park east of the Capitol--that by Story--whether he had "smashed a new silk hat" on a steam-heater on behalf of reciprocity; and he softly responded, "It was not a new hat." That Mr. Blaine was keenly disappointed when defeated for the Presidency at Cincinnati, there is no doubt; and that he began then to see that it was not his destiny to be President, is certain.