The members selected a committee to come down to New York and see Mr. Evarts. They went with the idea of ascertaining how far he would remember with gratitude those who elected him. Their visit was a miserable failure. They came in hot indignation to my office and said they did not propose to send such a cold and unsympathetic man as their representative to Washington and earnestly requested my consent to their nominating me at the caucus the next morning. The committee telephoned to Albany and received the assent of every faction of their party to this proposition. Then they proposed that when the caucus met, Mr. Evarts, of course, should receive complimentary speeches from his friends. Meanwhile others would be nominated, and then a veteran member, whom they designated, should propose me in the interest of harmony and the union of the party, whereat the sponsors of the other candidate would withdraw their man, and I be nominated by acclamation. My answer was a most earnest appeal for Mr. Evarts. Then Mr. Evarts's friends rallied to his support and he was elected. I place Mr. Evarts in the foremost rank as a lawyer, a wit, and a diplomat. He tried successfully the most famous cases of his time and repeatedly demonstrated his remarkable genius. As a general railway counsel and, therefore, as an administrator in the retaining of distinguished counsels, I met with many of the best men at the bar, but never any with such a complete and clarified intellect as William M. Evarts. The mysteries of the most complicated cases seemed simple, the legal difficulties plain, and the solution comprehensible to everybody under his analysis. Mr. Evarts was the wittiest man I ever met. It is difficult to rehabilitate in the sayings of a wit the complete flavor of the utterance. It is easier with a man of humor. Evarts was very proud of his efforts as a farmer on his large estate in Vermont. Among his prizes was a drove of pigs. He sent to Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite a copy of his eulogy on Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, Waite's predecessor, and at the same time a ham, saying in his letter: "My dear Chief Justice, I send you to-day one of my prize hams and also my eulogy on Chief Justice Chase, both the products of my pen." The good things Mr. Evarts said would be talked of long after a dinner. I remember on one occasion his famous partner, Mr. Choate, who was a Harvard man, while Evarts was a graduate from Yale, introduced Mr. Evarts by saying that he was surprised that a Yale man, with all the prejudices of that institution against the superior advantages of Harvard, should have risked the coats of his stomach at a Harvard dinner. Mr. Evarts replied: "When I go to a Harvard dinner I always leave the coats of my stomach at home."