While I was in Washington I again saw my old friend Secretary John Hay, who gave me his photograph taken in December, 1904, and consequently his last. He looked ill then, but was so keenly interested in Mexican affairs, and spoke so eulogistically of General Diaz, that on my return to England I ventured to ask him if he would write a few lines for the Biography of the Mexican President, on which I was by that time working.
He had already started for Europe when the letter arrived, but he wrote the following hurried lines, penned a week after his return to Washington from his last trip in search of health, when he must have been very busy:
“Department of State, Washington,
“June 20th, 1905.
“Dear Mrs. Tweedie,
“I have received your letter of the 14th of March, asking me to contribute something to your Life of Diaz.
“It would be a very great pleasure to me to have my name associated with yours in what I am sure will be a very interesting work, but I am obliged to decline all such requests, however agreeable and flattering they may be.
“I am, with many thanks,
“Sincerely yours,
(Signed) “John Hay.”
The letter was delivered in London the day following his death.
America has always sent us of her best in Ambassadors, but none was more popular or more respected than Colonel John Hay. The most shy and retiring of men, he abhorred ovations; public speaking was torture to him, yet he was the constant recipient of the first, and was excellent at the second. One of the most cultured of American Ambassadors, he was really a man of letters. He had not the acute legal knowledge of Mr. Choate, nor the diplomatic manner of Mr. Whitelaw Reid, but the world knew him and admired him as a man who was honest to the core.