There was general grieving in New York City--except among the criminals and Tammany--at the news of his resignation. All sorts of persons expressed regrets that were really sincere, and their gratitude for the good which he had done for them all. Some of them protested that he ought not to abandon the duty which he had discharged so valiantly. One of these was Edwin L. Godkin, editor of The Nation and the New York Evening Post, a critic who seldom spoke politely of anything except ideals which had not been attained, or commended persons who were not dead and so beyond reach of praise. Since Roosevelt himself has quoted this passage from Godkin's letter to him, I think it ought to be reprinted here: "I have a concern, as the Quakers say, to put on record my earnest belief that in New York you are doing the greatest work of which any American today is capable, and exhibiting to the young men of the country the spectacle of a very important office administered by a man of high character in the most efficient way amid a thousand difficulties. As a lesson in politics I cannot think of anything more instructive." Godkin was a great power for good, in spite of the obvious unpopularity which an incessant critic cannot fail to draw down upon himself. The most pessimistic of us secretly crave a little respite when for half an hour we may forget the circumambient and all-pervading gloom: music, or an entertaining book, or a dear friend lifts the burden from us. And then comes our uncompromising pessimist and chides us for our softness and for letting ourselves be led astray from our pessimism. His jeremiads are probably justified, and as the historian looks back he finds that they give the truest statement of the past; for the present must be very bad, indeed, if it does not discover conditions still worse in the past from which it has emerged. But Godkin living could not escape from two sorts of unsympathetic depreciators: first, the wicked who smarted under his just scourge, and next, the upright, who tired of unremittent censure, although they admitted that it was just.