For many years, when I spoke in northern New York I was always met at the Syracuse station by a superintendent of the Lackawanna Railroad with a special train filled with friends. He carried me up to my destination and brought me back in the morning. It was his great day of the year, and during the trip he was full of reminiscences, and mainly of the confidences reposed in him by the president of the road, my old and valued friend, Samuel Sloan. One fall he failed to appear, and there was no special train to meet me. I was told by friends that the reason was his wife had died and he was in mourning. The morning after the meeting I started to call upon him, but was informed that he was very hostile and would not see me. I was not going to lose an old friend like that and went up to his office. As soon as I entered, he said: "Go away, I don't want to see you again." I appealed to him, saying: "I cannot lose so good a friend as you. If there is anything I have done or said, I will do everything in my power to make it right." He turned on me sharply and with great emotion told this story: "My wife and I lived in loving harmony for over thirty years, and when she died recently I was heartbroken. The whole town was sympathetic; most of the business houses closed during the hour of the funeral. I had arranged to have ministers whom my wife admired, and with them selected passages of scriptures and hymns to which she was devoted. A new minister in town was invited by the others to participate, and without my knowledge. I looked over the congregation, all Mary's friends. I listened to the services, which Mary herself would have chosen, and said to Mary's spirit, which I knew to be hovering about: 'We are all paying you a loving tribute.' Then the new minister had for his part the announcement and reading of a hymn. At the last Republican convention at Saratoga, in order to illustrate the condition of the Democratic party, you told a story about a boy walking among the children's graves in the old cemetery at Peekskill, eating green apples and whistling 'Nearer, my God, to Thee.' The new minister gave that hymn, 'Nearer, my God, to Thee.' Your story came up in my mind, and I burst out laughing. I disgraced myself, insulted the memory of Mary, and I never want to see you again." XXI. NATIONAL REPUBLICAN CONVENTIONS