There was nothing spectacular about Mr. Tilden. Not wanting the sense of humor, he seldom indulged it. In spite of his positiveness of opinion and amplitude of knowledge, he was always courteous and deferential in debate. He had none of the audacious daring, let us say, of Mr. Blaine, the energetic self-assertion of Mr. Roosevelt. Either, in his place, would have carried all before him. It would be hard to find a character farther from that of a subtle schemer--sitting behind his screen and pulling his wires--which his political and party enemies discovered him to be as soon as he began to get in the way of the Machine and obstruct the march of the self-elect. His confidences were not effusive nor their subjects numerous. His deliberation was unfailing, and sometimes it carried the idea of indecision, not to say actual love of procrastination. But in my experience with him I found that he usually ended where he began, and it was nowise difficult for those whom he trusted to divine the bias of his mind where he thought it best to reserve its conclusions. I do not think that in any great affair he ever hesitated longer than the gravity of the case required of a prudent man, or that he had a preference for delays, or that he clung over-tenaciously to both horns of the dilemma, as his professional training and instinct might lead him to do, and did certainly expose him to the accusation of doing. He was a philosopher and took the world as he found it. He rarely complained and never inveighed. He had a discriminating way of balancing men’s good and bad qualities and of giving each the benefit of a generous accounting, and a just way of expecting no more of a man than it was in him to yield. As he got into deeper water his stature rose to its level, and, from his exclusion from the Presidency in 1877 to his renunciation of public affairs in 1884 and his death in 1886, his walks and ways might have been a study for all who would learn life’s truest lessons and know the real sources of honor, happiness, and fame. [Illustration] [Illustration] THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE Author of “The Bread-Line,” “Elizabeth,” “Mark Twain: A Biography,” etc. Then, it being no use to try, Carringford let the hand holding the book drop into his lap and from his lap to his side. His eyes stared grimly into the fire, which was dropping to embers.