After the termination of Mr. Chandler's third Senatorial term (on March 3, 1875), his name was connected, both in current rumor and in the deliberations of influential men, with several prominent positions. It was at one time predicted that he would be nominated for the St. Petersburg embassy, and at another that he would succeed Mr. Bristow as Secretary of the Treasury. Ground was not lacking for both reports, but the appointment which was actually made involved a far more complete test of his faculty of administration than would have attended either of the others. The Interior Department is the most complex division of the executive branch of the government. A great diversity of interests are under its charge, and its duties are dissimilar, widely ramified, and encumbered with a perplexing multiplicity of details. During President Grant's second term this Department, notwithstanding the personal honesty of Secretary Columbus Delano, had fallen into bad repute. It sheltered abuses and frauds which tainted the atmosphere, but were not hunted down and removed by its chiefs. From the scandals which this state of affairs created, Mr. Delano finally sought escape by a resignation, which took effect on Oct. 1, 1875. General Grant, who was determined to appoint to the place a man whose integrity, sagacity and vigor should make it certain that he would not tolerate incompetence and rascality among his subordinates, tendered the position to Mr. Chandler. After some hesitation, and no little urging by his friends, that gentleman accepted, and on Oct. 19, 1875, his commission as Secretary of the Interior was executed and sent to him. (His nomination was, on the meeting of Congress in December, promptly confirmed by the Senate, all of the Republican and three of the Democratic Senators voting affirmatively, with only six Democrats recorded in the negative). Mr. Chandler entered at once upon the discharge of his new and difficult duties. No man could have had less of the professional "reformer" about him--in fact he was not chary of expressing the most contemptuous skepticism concerning much that paraded itself as "reform"--but the exemplification which he gave of practical reform was at once thorough and brilliant. Without ostentation, without the faintest savor of cant, he went at his work in unpretentious, business-like, manful, and clear-sighted fashion. A firm believer himself that "corruption wins not more than honesty," he gave durable lessons on that theme in every bureau of the Interior Department. [Illustration: THE INTERIOR DEPARTMENT.[36]] The first step of Mr. Chandler's administration was the infusion of new blood. He applied to James M. Edmunds for aid in the selection of a Chief Clerk, and was by him advised to tender that important position to Alonzo Bell, then holding a place in the Treasury. What followed illustrates some of Mr. Chandler's methods of transacting business: