The Administration of Mr. Johnson had, before the death of Mr. Lane, been unhappily associated in the popular mind with another suicide. A few days before the assembling of Congress Mr. Preston King, collector of the port of New York, had drowned himself in the Hudson River by leaping from a ferry-boat. He had been for more than twenty years an intimate friend of Mr. Johnson and held, as already narrated, a confidential relation to him at the time of his accession to the Presidency. He had been especially influential in the National Republican Convention of 1864 in securing for Mr. Johnson the nomination for the Vice-Presidency. The original disagreement with Mr. Seward was generally ascribed to the influence of Mr. King upon the President, but when, with Mr. Seward in the Cabinet, Mr. King was appointed collector of customs for the port of New York, it was understood to mean that a perfect reconciliation had taken place between all the Republican factions in his State. The change in the President's position was a complete surprise to Mr. King and left him in a peculiarly embarrassing situation. He was essentially a radical man in all his political views, and the evident tendency of the President towards extreme conservatism on the question of reconstruction was a keen distress to him. He was at a loss to determine his course of action. If he should resign his position it would be the proclamation of hostility to one to whom he was deeply attached. If he should remain in office he feared it might be at the expense of forfeiting the good will of the tens of thousands of New-York Republicans who had always reposed the utmost confidence in his fidelity to principle, and who had rewarded him with the highest honors in their power to bestow. He had not desired the collectorship, and consented to accept it only from his sincere friendship for the President and from his earnest desire to harmonize the Republican party in New York and bring its full strength to the support of the Administration. The office had given him no pleasure. It had indeed brought him nothing but care and anxiety. The applications for place were numerous and perplexing, the daily routine of duty was onerous and exacting, and his pecuniary responsibility to the Government, much exaggerated by his worried mind, constantly alarmed him. Mr. King found himself therefore so situated that, whichever way he turned, he faced embarrassment in his career, and as he imagined, disaster to his reputation. In the conflicting emotions incident to his entangled position, his brain was fevered, and his intellect became disordered. From the anguish which his sensitive nature could not endure, he sought relief in the grave.