Sholes's activities as a journalist finally took him into Wisconsin politics, a career for which, in character and temperament, he was very poorly fitted. Nevertheless, he served two terms as state senator, in 1848 and 1849 from Racine County, and in 1856 and 1857 from Kenosha County. In 1852 and 1853 he represented Kenosha in the assembly. While a member of the council he was a witness of the homicide of one of the members by another, a tragedy made familiar to the world by Charles Dickens in "American Notes." The account given by Dickens was taken from Sholes's own paper, the Southport Telegraph. In 1860 Sholes removed to Milwaukee, where he had an active and varied career, first as postmaster, and later as commissioner of public works and collector of customs. He was also for a long time editor of the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel and the Milwaukee News. It was in 1866, while serving as collector of customs for the Port of Milwaukee, that the invention of the typewriter enters the story. On the personal side much more could be written concerning Sholes, for he was a man of very unusual and attractive character. Some might have called him an eccentric, but his eccentricities were of a kind which endeared him to everyone. He is described as one of the most unselfish, kind-hearted and companionable men that ever lived. He was also a man of extreme personal modesty, and of almost excessive tenderness of conscience, viewed from the usual business standpoint. He was always more than just to others and less than just to himself. Some phases of his character were a puzzle. As an editor he made it a rule to copy into his own paper all the adverse criticisms that were passed upon him by his political adversaries, and some of them were very bitter and unjust, and he would always omit all complimentary notice of himself and his work. Gentle and lovable, cultured and brilliant, modest and unselfish, these were the outstanding characteristics of Christopher Latham Sholes. He was not the kind of man ever to make much money. In the days before the typewriter he had, by a fortunate chance, acquired wealth, but he did not keep it. The typewriter gave him another opportunity, but he let it pass. From first to last he was singularly indifferent to worldly fortune. One day, in his later years, he remarked to a friend that he had been trying all his life to escape becoming a millionaire and he thought he had succeeded admirably. He was always a visionary, and one of his visions was of a human Utopia which should witness the abolition of greed and poverty and the dawn of universal love. Call him a dreamer if you will, but one day he dreamed a dream which he proceeded to translate into a wonderful reality, which has placed the whole world in his everlasting debt.