Your matters shall be attended to.
But he still admitted that he, Rerdell, wrote the words and put them in the mouth of the Attorney-General:
You shall be well taken care of.
He says in his letter of July 5, 1882:
If I had remained with the Government I have every reason to believe I would have a good position.
What next? Mr. Rerdell, in his examination-in-chief, swears that he himself wrote these words:
The next evening I called on Mr. Woodward to see if he had anything more to say, and he told me a place had been found for my father-in-law, and to give the application to Senator Clayton; to make the application for the Interior Department, as it was best not to put him into the Post-Office Department for fear of criticism; that the appointment should be made at once. It was all arranged. The next day I saw Clayton, who said the same thing.
On cross-examination, at page 2505, he swears that Dorsey wrote a part of this; that Dorsey wrote the following words:
As it was best not to put him into the Post-Office Department for fear of criticism.
When he testified on direct examination he had this marked paper before him; in the absence of the paper, on the cross-examination, he takes his solemn oath that he did not write it, but that Senator Dorsey did. What confidence can you put in that kind of testimony? I would like to have you, gentlemen, some time, or I would like to have anybody who has the slightest interest in the thing, read this affidavit and see whether it is the work of two or the work of one. You let two men write, one writing one paragraph and the other another paragraph, and then you read it; there is no man in the world accustomed to read books that cannot instantly detect the difference in style, the different mode of expression, the different use of language. Nobody can see any difference in the writing; nobody can see the slightest difference in the mode of expression; the sharpest verbal mechanic that ever lived cannot see a joint between these paragraphs. They emanated from the same brain; they were written by the same hand; and if any man, who has ever read one book clear through, will read that, he will see that one person wrote it all. But Mr. Bliss tells you that here is a passage that shows the handiwork of S. W. Dorsey, because Dorsey was a politician: