... I never have been busier in my life than in the last two weeks. Ballot Reform has taken up a very great portion of my time. I have just returned from a lobbying trip to Sacramento. The bill will not pass, though the best men in both Houses favor it. I went up on the invitation of the chairman of the Assembly Committee to address the Committee. I spoke for an hour and a half. At the end of that time only one man in the group openly opposed the scheme, and he confessed that the bill would do just what I claimed for it, and made this confession to the Committee. "But," said he, "it tends to the disintegration of political parties and as they are essential to our life we must not help on their destruction." ... The Committee of the Senate decided without any debate on the bill to report adversely to it. I got them to reconsider their vote, and we will have a hearing at any rate before the bill is killed. The Legislature is altogether for boodle. ... Your book has been of the greatest assistance to me. I virtually made my speech from it and left the book with the chairman of the Committee at his special request. ... If it had come out a month sooner we would have stood fifty per cent better chance of getting the bill through, because the papers would have come to the front so much sooner and we would have been thirty days ahead with our bill. I tell you I felt quite proud in addressing the distinguished legislature to refer to "my friend Wigmore's book." ... San Francisco, May 10, 1889 ... I am coming nearer to you. On Monday I leave to take up my residence in New York, as correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle. I do not know where I will be located, but mail addressed to me at the Hoffman House will reach me when I arrive, which will be in about ten days. My purpose is to breathe a new atmosphere for a while so that I may broaden. We must make arrangements soon to meet. I want to know your New York reform friends. ... New York, June 21, 1889 ... This lapse of a couple of weeks means that I have been enjoying the delights of a New York summer, in which only slaves work and many of these find refuge in suicide. ... Not a single reformer, big or little, have I yet met. Your friend Bishop [Footnote: Joseph Bucklin Bishop, editor of Theodore Roosevelt and His Time.] I have not called on, though I have twice started to do so, and have been switched off. ... I will go within a couple of days for the spirit must be revived. One day early in this week I had an intense desire to visit you immediately and was almost on the verge of letting things go and rush off, but duty held me. ...