Mr. Dana was petulant and violent in his expressions against Cleveland, and said that he had decided to support General Butler, who was the candidate of the Labor-Socialistic element, and who, he said, would receive not less than 25,000 votes in New York City. I told him that Butler might receive 2500, and if there were 25,000 disgruntled Democrats who wanted to defeat Cleveland, they would certainly vote for Blaine. The result was about as I had predicted. Butler received only a few thousand votes, and Dana and his following, while ostensibly supporting Butler, voted squarely for Blaine. Dana’s paper was the most aggressive of all the anti-Cleveland newspapers in the country, and it doubtless exerted great influence, but not sufficient to lose Cleveland the State. Charles A. Dana was the ablest editor ever developed by American journalism. Horace Greeley was more pungent and telling in his political articles, and Henry Watterson is more brilliant, but Charles A. Dana was the strongest editorial writer this country has ever produced. He was versatile, powerful, and elegant, but an unfortunate personal estrangement made him the bitterest of Cleveland’s enemies, and paved the way for the _Sun_ to be transformed from an out-and-out Tammany organ to the most aggressive of Republican organs. It was not until I met Cleveland at Albany, soon after his election, that I learned the cause of the estrangement between Cleveland and Dana, and the statement given by Mr. Cleveland was subsequently confirmed by Mr. Dana. Dana had very earnestly supported Cleveland’s nomination and election for Governor in 1882, and after the election he wrote a personal letter to Cleveland asking the appointment of a friend to the position of Adjutant-General. His chief purpose was to give a position on the staff to his son, Paul Dana, who is now his successor in the editorial chair. Cleveland received that letter as he received thousands of other letters recommending appointments, instead of recognizing the claim Mr. Dana had upon him for the courtesy of an answer. Beecher had a candidate for the same position, and Cleveland gave it to Beecher’s man without any explanation whatever to Dana, who felt that he had been discourteously treated by Cleveland.