Everything they had--all the beautiful gifts, trophies, souvenirs, even the little houses owned by Mrs. Grant in Washington, and the repurchased Dent property about St. Louis--had to be sold. Grant insisted, though it left them, for the time at least, absolutely penniless. It had dragged down others with them; it involved his honored name in a whirlpool of censure, criticism, and calumny that well-nigh crushed him. Fallen from such supremely high estate, the insults and indignities that beset him now far outweighed the slights and sneers that had been his portion in the days of his earlier humiliation. Over the depths of the misery that had come to him in his old and recently honored age let us draw the curtain. No man on earth could know the suffering it cost him. Only one woman could faintly see. Helping hands there were outstretched to him instanter, and money to meet the immediate need. Then, as the storm subsided and the extent of Ward's villainy and Grant's innocence became known, new measures were taken to provide against absolute want. A trust fund had already been raised. A measure was speedily set on foot to restore to Grant the rank and pay which he had surrendered on assuming the presidency, and a modest competence would thus be insured him and those he loved. There was a home in which to live. They could even spend the summers at the seashore. There were offers of congenial occupation that might have proved mildly lucrative. There was measurable return to hope and possible health. There had never been complaint or repining. To all about him he had been gentleness, consideration, kindliness itself. There was just one cause of new, yet slight anxiety: All through that summer of '84, while at Long Branch, his throat had been giving him pain, and a Philadelphia physician, examining it for the first time late in September, advised, even urged, says Badeau, his consulting a specialist on returning to town. For a time he took no heed. He was writing now, long hours each day, but at last he called, as further urged by his own physician, upon that distinguished expert, Dr. J. H. Douglas, and that evening calmly admitted that the trouble in his throat was cancerous in tendency. And that this was true, the fact that he suddenly dropped the luxury of all the days that had followed Donelson--his cigar--and the sufferings that followed in November and December proved beyond possibility of doubt.... And meanwhile a nation stood with bated breath and watched and prayed. Crowds gathered about the house and importuned the physicians for tidings. Congress had passed amid scenes of emphatic popular approval a bill restoring him again to the generalship of old--almost the last act signed by Mr. Arthur before leaving, as it was almost the first commission signed by Mr. Cleveland after entering, the White House.