When Mr. Tilden was elected governor, my friend, General Husted, was speaker of the assembly, which was largely Republican. The governor asked General Husted to come down in the evening, because he wanted to consult him about the improvements and alterations necessary for the Executive Mansion, and to have the speaker secure the appropriation. During the discussion the governor placed before the speaker a bottle of rare whiskey, with the usual accompaniments. In front of the governor was a bottle of his Johannisberger and a small liqueur glass, a little larger than a thimble, from which the governor would from time to time taste a drop of this rare and exquisite fluid. The general, after a while, could not restrain his curiosity any longer and said: "Governor, what is that you are drinking?" The governor explained its value and the almost utter impossibility of securing any. "Well, governor," said Speaker Husted, "I never saw any before and I think I will try it." He seized the bottle, emptied it in his goblet and announced to the astonished executive that he was quite right in his estimate of its excellence. The governor lost a bottle of his most cherished treasure but received from the Republican legislature all the appropriation he desired for the Executive Mansion. It has been my good fortune to know well the governors of our State of New York, commencing with Edmund D. Morgan. With many of them I was on terms of close intimacy. I have already spoken of Governors Seymour, Fenton, Dix, Tilden, Cleveland, and Roosevelt. It might be better to confine my memory to those who have joined the majority. Lucius Robinson was an excellent executive of the business type, as also were Alonzo B. Cornell and Levi P. Morton. Frank S. Black was in many ways original. He was an excellent governor, but very different from the usual routine. In the Spanish-American War he had a definite idea that the National Guard of our State should not go into the service of the United States as regiments, but as individual volunteers. The Seventh Regiment, which was the crack organization of the Guard, was severely criticised because they did not volunteer. They refused to go except as the Seventh Regiment, and their enemies continued to assail them as tin soldiers. General Louis Fitzgerald and Colonel Appleton came to me very much disturbed by this condition. General Russell A. Alger, secretary of war, was an intimate friend of mine, and I went to Washington and saw him and the president on the acute condition affecting the reputation of the Seventh Regiment. General Alger said: "We are about to make a desperate assault upon the fortifications of Havana. Of course there will be many casualties and the fighting most severe. Will the Seventh join that expedition?"