While the General missed the reason of my frequent visits, he no less relished our talks; for a president, let me inform you, is a mighty idle man, for all your sycophants and toadies of print would depict him as a galley slave who breaks his heart against an oar of duty. A president has little to do beyond fret and fume while affairs go crosswise to his wishes; also, the General would have him to be a most tied and helpless creature, besides. “The presidency,” he would say, “when one goes to a last experiment, is but another word for paralysis.” “And is a president such a thing without hands?” I would ask, for it was sure he thirsted to lecture. “The office is so much bigger than the man,” he would reply, “that it controls him, as a mountain might bear down the strongest were you to load his back with one.” “Now, I had thought a president to be of some consequence,” I would retort, in a manner of vexing him. “At least I have known presidents to think so.” “And so thought I,” he would respond, “ten months ago and before inauguration. Sir, a president is but the fly on the chariot wheel. Being vain, the insect might flatter himself with a theory that he is the reason of that dust and motion he observes. But the insect's vanity would be none the less in error. I say to you, a presidency is a thing of bolts and bars and locks and fetters. What may a president do? He may say this man shall keep office and that man shall not, and that would be as important as if he said this rat shall go overboard and that rat stay to roam the ship. The vermin fate of these, for black or white, would neither affect a course nor pick those ports at which the vessel touched.” “But a president may veto a bill,” I would reply, “or make it a law with his fist. He may bring down a war.” “And yet he is no free agent when he does any of these,” he would return. “He is pressed upon by one force or another, or mayhap a dozen at once, and must go with conditions like a man in a landslide. As I say, the office is so much bigger than the man that it transacts the man, and not the man the office. It is as though one were made president of the Potomac, or of a glacier. Could he take the one beyond its banks with a war or stay the other in its progress with a veto? He might run up a flag, order a bugle blown, fire a gun; but the river or the glacier would be the last impressed. No, sir; were one made chief magistrate of that snowstorm which now whitens the world outside, and set to rule its flakes, he would be in as much control as when given a White House and told that he is President.” Mayhap it will interest should I offer a report of one of our afternoons. It might go as specimen of all, for each was but a strolling here and there of talk. Our discourse would be hit or miss, like a rag carpet, and would fall foul of whatever caught the eye or stubbed the toe of fancy at the moment.