“I recognize the importance of the place to which you have elected me, and I should be base if I did not also recognize the great man whom you have elected me to succeed. I say for him, Ohio has had few larger-minded, broader-minded men in the records of our history than that of Allen G. Thurman. Differing widely from him as I have done in politics, and do, I recognize him as a man high in character and great in intellect; and I take this occasion to refer to what I have never before referred to in public—that many years ago, in the storm of party fighting, when the air was filled with all sorts of missiles aimed at the character and reputation of public men, when it was even for his party interest to join the general clamor against me and my associates, Senator Thurman said in public, in the campaign, on the stump,—where men are as likely to say unkind things as at any place in the world,—a most generous and earnest word of defense and kindness for me, which I shall never forget as long as I live. I say, moreover, that the flowers that bloom over the garden wall of party politics are the sweetest and most fragrant that bloom in the gardens of this world; and where we can early pluck them and enjoy their fragrance, it is manly and delightful to do so. “And now, gentlemen of the General Assembly, without distinction of party, I recognize this tribute and compliment made to me to-night. Whatever my own course may be in the future, a large share of the inspiration of my future public life will be drawn from this occasion and these surroundings, and I shall feel anew the sense of obligation that I owe to the State of Ohio. Let me venture to point a single sentence in regard to that work. During the twenty years that I have been in public life, almost eighteen of it in the Congress of the United States, I have tried to do one thing. Whether I was mistaken or otherwise, it has been the plan of my life to follow my convictions at whatever personal cost to myself. I have represented for many years a district in Congress whose approbation I greatly desired; but though it may seem, perhaps, a little egotistical to say it, I yet desired still more the approbation of one person, and his name is Garfield. He is the only man that I am compelled to sleep with, and eat with, and live with, and die with; and if I could not have his approbation, I should have bad companionship. And in this larger constituency which has called me to represent them now, I can only do what is true to my best self, applying the same rules. And if I should be so unfortunate as to lose the confidence of this larger constituency, I must do what every other fair-minded man has to do—carry his political life in his hand and take the consequences. But I must follow what seems to me to be the only safe rule of my life; and with that view of the