[D] "nother talk that I recall was at a social gathering. It was at a dinner party after the failure of Greeley's campaign. The host was, perhaps the most original genius in Washington. He was an old companion of Greeley at Brook Farm. He was giving the dinner in payment of a bet he had lost by reason of Greeley's defeat. The conversation embraced all the topics of the day and in the course of it turned to Seward. A member of the company thought that Seward had been dead years before he was put into the grave. General Garfield thought differently, and delivered, on the spur of the moment, a remarkable eulogy on the dead statesman. Soon afterward, I reduced to notes the outlines of that eulogy, so far as my memory served me, and I reproduce it here. General Garfield possesses rare conversational powers, and uses, in social discourse, a diction not less eloquent and elegant than that to which he is accustomed in the forum."--_Washington Correspondent of the Chicago Tribune._ THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. PRESIDENT GARFIELD'S FIRST OFFICIAL WORDS TO THE COUNTRY. Fellow Citizens,--We stand to-day upon an eminence which overlooks a hundred years of national life, a century crowded with perils, but crowned with the triumphs of liberty and law. Before continuing the onward march, let us pause on this height for a moment to strengthen our faith and renew our hope by a glance at the pathway along which our people have travelled. It is now three days more than a hundred years since the adoption of the first written Constitution of the United States, the articles of confederation and perpetual union. The new Republic was then beset with danger on every hand. It had not conquered a place in the family of nations. The decisive battle of the war for independence, whose centennial anniversary will soon be gratefully celebrated at Yorktown, had not yet been fought. The colonists were struggling not only against the armies of a great nation, but against the settled opinions of mankind, for the world did not believe that the supreme authority of government could be safely intrusted to the guardianship of the people themselves. We cannot overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage and the saving common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government. When they found, after a short trial, that the confederacy of States was too weak to meet the necessities of a vigorous and expanding republic, they boldly set it aside, and in its stead established a national union founded directly upon the will of the people, endowed with future powers of self-preservation, and with ample authority for the accomplishment of its great objects. Under this Constitution the boundaries of freedom have been enlarged, the foundations of order and peace have been strengthened, and the growth in all the better elements of national life has vindicated the wisdom of the founders, and given new hopes to their descendants. Under this