Mr. Blaine has a great memory. Nearly all who know him will speak of this. He seems never to forget faces, facts, or figures.
Thirty years after he attended school in Lancaster, Ohio, he went there to speak. It was, of course, known that he was coming, and an old acquaintance of the town, whom he had not seen all these years, said, “Now I am going to station myself up there by the cars, and see if he will know me. They say he has such a wonderful memory.” Several were looking on, watching the operation. Mr. Blaine had no sooner stepped off from the train than he spied him, and sang out at once, “Hello, John, how are you!” and a murmur of surprise went up from those who were in the secret.
At another time he was near Wheeling,—my informant thought it was across the river from Wheeling,—in Belmont County; he met a man and called him by name. The man said, “Well, I don’t know you.” Mr. Blaine told him just where he met him, at a convention, and then the man could not remember. That night he told some of his friends about it, and they said it was a fact; they were with him, and saw him introduced to Mr. Blaine and talk with him, and not till then did the man remember him.
As General Connor, ex-governor of Maine, who appointed Mr. Blaine to the United States senate, said: “He could do a thing now as well as any other time.”
“Governor Connor was in Washington,” he went on to relate, “and called upon Mr. Blaine when he was secretary of state, and he said, in his familiar way, ‘Now you talk with Mrs. Blaine awhile,’ and went into his study. In about an hour he called him, and all about his table were lying sheets of paper on which he had just written. It was his official document on the Panama canal, and which he read to the governor. It had been produced during the past hour, and appeared in print, with scarcely a change. It came out in a white heat, but it was all in there ready to be produced at any time.”
The General remarked, “This one characteristic of the man, and an element of his popularity and hold on others, is this close confidence he exercises in his friends, of which the above is an illustration.”
And this touches at once another feature, and that is his ability to read character, and so to know whom to trust. He goes right into a man’s life, when he gets at him.
While out riding, during the preparation of his volume, with his wife, two or three miles from Augusta, in Manchester township, he got out to walk, and finding a farmer in a field near by, he stopped, talked with him some time, asked him about his history, his ancestors, and found out pretty much all the man knew about himself, and could have told whether it would do to leave his pocket-book with the man or no. Such a thing is a habit with him, and keeps him near the people, gives him a look into their minds, a peep into their hearts, as well as a view of their history.
Character-readers usually are persons of strong intuitions. They see not so much the flesh and blood of the individual, as the soul within. Just giving one sharp, quick, penetrating look at the man in the concrete, and the abstract question is settled; the man is rated; his value written down. It is not so much a study as a look,—thought touches thought, mind feels of mind. It is power to know clearly, quickly, strongly, and certainly, with him. He does not have to eat a whole ham to find out whether it is tainted, nor drink an entire pan of milk to find out whether it is sweet.
Mr. Blaine is very obliging, and he can usually tell an opportunity from a chance. Life is no lottery to him; he keeps his feet on the granite, and gives all “fortuitous combination of atoms” the slip, being too discriminating to invest. One day he was in the old Journal office, now owned by Sprague and Son,—a very kind and considerate firm, who are producing a sprightly daily,—when a citizen entered who had just been appointed clerk of the Probate Court, and asked the gentleman to go on his bond. Mr. Blaine spoke up at once, “I will do it,” and then said it reminded him of a story, which he proceeded to tell:—