In 1877 President Hayes offered Curtis his choice of the foreign missions, supposing that he would elect to go to England. In refusing the honor Curtis expressed the doubt whether ‘a man absolutely without legal training of any kind could be a proper minister.’ Later the German mission was urged on him, but he saw no reason to change his former opinion. As an Independent, Curtis voiced opposition to machine methods in the State campaign of 1879, and in 1884 broke with his party and gave his support to Cleveland.

Albeit he was not college bred, Curtis received a full share of the honorary degrees which American colleges lavish every June upon those who have acquired reputation. For the two years prior to his death he was Chancellor of the University of New York.

The literary work of his middle and later years remains for the most part embedded in the files of ‘Harper’s Monthly.’ Three or four little volumes of ‘Easy Chair’ papers (less than a tenth part of the whole number of his contributions) were printed in 1893–94. Written to serve an ephemeral purpose, these essays have a permanent value. It is singular that there is no demand for more reprints of the work of a writer whose journalism was better than most men’s books. Besides the ‘Easy Chair’ papers there were published posthumously Orations and Addresses edited by C. E. Norton, 1894; Literary and Social Essays, 1895; Ars Recte Vivendi, 1898; Early Letters of George William Curtis to John S. Dwight, edited by G. W. Cooke, 1898.

Curtis died, after a long and painful illness, on August 31, 1892.

II
THE MAN

Of Curtis it may be said that his character is revealed in every line of his writing and in every act of his public and private life. He was gracious, winning, generous, quick to forgive, and slow to take offence. Goodness as exemplified in not a few good men is alike painful to those who possess it and to those on whom its influence is exerted. Virtue as exemplified in him never wore the austere garb or the gloomy countenance.

At the time of Curtis’s defection from the Republican party incredible abuse was showered on him, not only in the press but through anonymous letters. He was much saddened by it, less from the personal point of view than because of the revelation it gave of the meanness and vindictiveness of human nature. Having thought too well of his fellows, he suffered under the disillusionment, all of which goes to show how optimistic at heart this disciple of Thackeray and writer of satires was. And when Senator Conkling made a savage personal attack on him in the New York State convention of 1877, Curtis seems to have had no feeling towards his enemy but that of pity: ‘It was the saddest sight I ever knew, that man glaring at me in a fury of hate and storming out his foolish blackguardism.’

If Curtis’s career illustrates one thing above another, it is his willingness to sacrifice mental ease and personal comfort for an ideal. But the sacrifice was made with such good nature, such grace in the acquiescence, that one forgets its extent, and even makes the mistake of thinking that possibly it cost him little. Undoubtedly it cost him much, this giving up of literature for politics, this putting aside of all public honors because there was a nearer duty which could not be neglected.

III
THE WRITER AND THE ORATOR

The author of Nile Notes of a Howadji loved alliteration. In his early books he amused himself with pleasant arrangements of words such as ‘camels with calm, contemptuous eyes,’ or ‘lustrous leaves languidly moving,’ or ‘slim minarets spiring silverly and strangely from the undefined mass of mud houses.’ Note this description of the date-palm: ‘Plumed as a prince and graceful as a gentleman, stands the date; and whoever travels among palms travels in good society;’ or this of the sakias: ‘Like huge summer insects they doze upon the bank, droning a melancholy, monotonous song. The slow, sad sound pervades the land—one calls to another, and he sighs to his neighbor, and the Nile is shored with sound no less than sand.’