My Memories of Eighty Years

by Chauncey M. Depew

Passing through Albany while he was governor, I stopped over to pay my respects. I was very fond of him personally. When I rang the door-bell of the Executive Mansion and inquired for the governor, the servant said: "The governor is very ill and can see nobody." Then I asked him to tell the governor, when he was able to receive a message, that Chauncey Depew called and expressed his deep regret for his illness. Suddenly the governor popped out from the parlor and seized me by the hand and said: "Chauncey, come in. I was never so glad to see anybody in my life."

He told me the legislature had adjourned and left on his hands several thousands of thirty-days bills—that is, bills on which he had thirty days to sign or veto, or let them become laws by not rejecting them. So he had to deny himself to everybody to get the leisure to read them over and form decisions.

"Do you know, Chauncey," he said, "this is a new business to me. Most of these bills are on subjects which I never have examined, studied, or thought about. It is very difficult to form a wise judgment, and I want to do in each case just what is right." For the moment he became silent, seemingly absorbed by anxious thoughts about these bills. Then suddenly he exclaimed: "By the way, Chauncey, you've done a great deal of thinking in your life, and I never have done any except on business. Does intense thinking affect you as it does me, by upsetting your stomach and making you throw up?"

"No, governor," I answered; "if it did I fear I would be in a chronic state of indigestion."

While he was governor he canvassed the State in a private car and made many speeches. In a plain, homely man-to-man talk he was very effective on the platform. His train stopped at a station in a Republican community where there were few Democrats, while I was addressing a Republican meeting in the village. When I had finished my speech I said to the crowd, which was a large one: "Governor Flower is at the station, and as I passed he had very few people listening to him. Let us all go over and give him an audience."

The proposition was received with cheers. I went ahead, got in at the other end of the governor's car from the one where he was speaking from the platform. As this Republican crowd began to pour in, it was evident as I stood behind him without his knowing of my presence, that he was highly delighted. He shouted: "Fellow citizens, I told you they were coming. They are coming from the mountains, from the hills, and from the valleys. It is the stampede from the Republican party and into our ranks and for our ticket. This is the happiest evidence I have received of the popularity of our cause and the success of our ticket."

Standing behind him, I made a signal for cheers, which was heartily responded to, and the governor, turning around, saw the joke, grasped me cordially by the hand, and the whole crowd, including the veteran and hardened Democrats on the car, joined in the hilarity of the occasion.

He came to me when he was running for the second time for Congress, and said that some of the people of his district were anxious for me to deliver an address for one of their pet charities, and that the meeting would be held in Harlem, naming the evening. I told him I would go. He came for me in his carriage, and I said: "Governor, please do not talk to me on the way up. I was so busy that I have had no time since I left my office this afternoon to prepare this address, and I want every minute while we are riding to the meeting."

The meeting was a large one. The governor took the chair and introduced me in this original way: "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "I want to say about Chauncey Depew, whom I am now going to introduce to you as the lecturer of the evening, that he is no Demosthenes, because he can beat Demosthenes out of sight. He prepared his speech in the carriage in which I was bringing him up here, and he don't have, like the old Greek, to chew pebble-stones in order to make a speech."

Governor Flower in a conservative way was a successful trader in the stock market. When he felt he had a sure point he would share it with a few friends. He took special delight in helping in this way men who had little means and no knowledge of the art of moneymaking. There were a great many benefited by his bounty.