The most potent factor in the destruction of his enemies and buttressing his own cause was his inimitable wit and humor. In broad statesmanship, solid requirements, and effective eloquence, he stood above the successful mediocrity of his time--the Buchanans and the Polks, the Franklin Pierces and the Winfield Scotts--like a star of the first magnitude above the Milky Way. But in later years he thought the failure to reach the supreme recognition to which he was entitled was due to his humor having created the impression in the minds of his countrymen that he was not a serious person. Wayne MacVeagh was a very interesting and original speaker. He had a finished and cultured style and a very attractive delivery. He was past master of sarcasm as well as of burning eloquence on patriotic themes. When I was a freshman at Yale he was a senior. I heard him very often at our debating society, the Linonian, where he gave promise of his future success. His father-in-law was Simon Cameron, secretary of war, and he was one of the party which went with Mr. Lincoln to Gettysburg and heard Lincoln's famous address. He told me that it did not produce much impression at the time, and it was long after before the country woke up to its surpassing excellence, and he did not believe the story still current that Mr. Lincoln wrote it on an envelope while on the train to Gettysburg. MacVeagh became one of the leaders of the American bar and was at one time attorney-general of the United States. He was successful as a diplomat as minister to Turkey and to Italy. I heard him on many occasions and spoke with him on many after-dinner platforms. As an after-dinner speaker he was always at his best if some one attacked him, because he had a very quick temper. He got off on me a witticism which had considerable vogue at the time. When I was elected president of the New York Central Railroad, the Yale Association of New York gave me a dinner. It was largely attended by distinguished Yale graduates from different parts of the country. MacVeagh was one of the speakers. In the course of his speech he said: "I was alarmed when I found that our friend Chauncey had been elected president of the most unpopular railroad there is in the country. But rest assured, my friends, that he will change the situation, and before his administration is closed make it the most popular of our railroad corporations, because he will bring the stock within the reach of the poorest citizen of the land." The stock was then at the lowest point in its history on account of its life-and-death fight with the West Shore Railroad, and so, of course, the reverse of my friend MacVeagh's prediction was not difficult.