In 1865 Grant visited the Senate Chamber at Washington. He paid his respects to the senators, and left the room. When he had gone, one of the Democratic members declared that a great mistake had been made in appointing Grant a lieutenant general, for there wasn't a second lieutenant in the home-guard of his state who did not "cut a bigger swell" than the man who had just left their presence! When he was regarded as an available candidate for the presidency during the war, he was approached on the subject by a zealous partisan. He declared that there was only one political office which he desired. When the war was over, he wanted to be elected mayor of Galena! If successful, he intended to see to it that the sidewalk between his house and the depot was put in better order. In one of his excursions in 1865, he visited his former home at Galena. A magnificent reception welcomed him. Triumphal arches greeted him in the streets, in which were blazoned the victories he had won. In that which contained his house and the sidewalk he condemned was one bearing the inscription, "General, the sidewalk is built." At Georgetown, where his childhood had been spent, and in whose streets he had first smelt gunpowder as a baby, the whole town turned out to see and to greet him with the homage due to the great conqueror. Here he made one of his longest speeches, amounting to something like ten lines! In Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, he was received as no man ever had been before. At West Point, whither he had gone to pay his grateful respects to his alma mater, Lieutenant General Scott, his old commander in Mexico, presented him a copy of "Scott's Memoirs," inscribed, "From the oldest to the greatest General." If Scott's opinion, as a military man, is worth anything to the sceptic, here was his written indorsement of the preëminence of Grant. Grant made no speeches. In this respect he has been an enigma to the American people. He was a reticent man, in the fullest sense of the word. For my own part, I should as soon think of condemning Abraham Lincoln because he could not, or did not, turn back somersets on a tight rope, as to complain of Grant because he could not, or did not, make speeches. In this respect he does not differ from hundreds of other great men. Washington and Jefferson were very indifferent speech-makers. Napoleon wrote startling bulletins, but never distinguished himself as an orator. Grant's congratulatory orders are full of fire, and, better, full of sound common sense. His reports are replete with wisdom simply expressed, and they are models of compact narration.