"You don't get in at all, you blasted old sinner," said Morrison.
"I have scriptural warrant," General Butler said. "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth the corn."
"All right, old man," said Morrison, good-humoredly, "take all the time you want."
In his speech before the convention General Butler was not at his happiest, and in closing he gave me a particularly good opening. "If you adopt this platform of my friend Watterson," he said, "God may help you, but I can't."
I was standing by his side, and, it being my turn, he made way for me, and I said: "During the last few days and nights of agreeable, though rather irksome, intercourse, I have learned to love General Butler, but I must declare that in an option between him and the Almighty I have a prejudice in favor of God."
In his personal intercourse, General Butler was the most genial of men. The subcommittee in charge of the preparation of a platform held its meetings in the drawing-room of his hotel apartment, and he had constituted himself our host as well as our colleague. I had not previously met him. It was not long after we came together before he began to call me by my Christian name. At one stage of the proceedings when by substituting one word for another it looked as though we might reach an agreement, he said to me: "Henry, what is the difference between 'exclusively for public purposes' and 'a tariff for revenue only'?"
"I know of none," I answered.
"Do you think that the committee have found you out?"
"No, I scarcely think so."
"Then I will see that they do," and he proceeded in his peculiarly subtle way to undo all that we had done, prolonging the session twenty-four hours.