Who was the un-observer to say that familiarity breeds contempt? He went wide of the truth; he should have said that familiarity breeds self-confidence. Now I knew the General--I knew the windings of his thought as one knows his way about a house. Folk called him a hero; he was never so to me. And yet, more than any, I knew him to be even better and braver and broader than was his fame in the worshiping mouths of ones who uplifted him to be a god. No, the General and I neither looked up nor looked down when we dealt with one another; we met ever on level terms. He was president, or shortly would be; but what then? As he himself said, “The presidency is a condition, not an attribute, as it might be a malady or a fortune, an evil or a good. And if I am King are you not Warwick?” This last was his way of phrasing it when, a year or so later, I told him of some overheard amazement concerning the easy, old-shoe terms on which I lived with him. Such being our attitudes one to the other, the General's oral exaltations--while I identified them for honest and as from his soul's soul--struck on me as more florid than was called for by an interview, private and commonplace, between us two. But it was the nature of him; his surface could be made to toss like some tempest-bitten ocean, while his steady depths were calm. This may explain, if it does not excuse, that while he thus walked about, raging and eloquent, I listened with a bit of impatience, helping myself meanwhile to a mouthful of whisky and filling a pipe of my own. “Say no more,” I observed, having advantage of a pause; “say no more. Eaton you will have it, and Eaton it shall be. But, on the whole, do you call it good to your Peg? Do you call it wise or friendly to put her forth to be the target for every bolt of detraction?” The General drew over to the fire and sat down. Slowly he poured himself a glass of spirits, and then as slowly drank it off. For some moments he smoked in silence.