I saw one yesterday, with your name attached to it, and it made my heart ache for your family. As a resident in your State I felt humiliated. Two of Wisconsin's ablest men have been thus slaughtered by the rude broad-axe of the engraver. Last fall, Senator Spooner, who is also a man with a first-class head and face, was libeled in this same reckless way. It makes me mad, and in that way impairs my usefulness. I am not a good citizen, husband or father when I am mad. I am a perfect simoom of wrath at such times, and I am not responsible for what I do. Nothing can arouse the indignation of your friends, regardless of party, so much as the thought that while you are working so hard in the postoffice at Washington with your coat off, collecting box rent and making up the Western mail, the remorseless engraver and electrotyper are seeking to down you by making pictures of you in which you appear either as a dude or a tough. While I have not the pleasure of being a member of your party, having belonged to what has been sneeringly alluded to as the g.o.p., I cannot refrain from expressing my sympathy at this time. Though we may have differed heretofore upon important questions of political economy, I cannot exult over these portraits. Others may gloat over these efforts to injure you, but I do not. I am not much of a gloater, anyhow. I leave those to gloat who are in the gloat business. Still, it is one of the drawbacks incident to greatness. We struggle hard through life that we may win the confidence of our fellow-men, only at last to have pictures of ourselves printed and distributed where they will injure us. [Illustration: ASSORTED PHYSIOGNOMY.] I desire to add before closing this letter, Mr. Vilas, that with those who are acquainted with you and know your sterling worth, these portraits will make no difference. We will not allow them to influence us socially or politically. What the effect may be upon offensive partisans who are total strangers to you, I do not know.