Mrs. Hancock opened the gate of her little garden and gathered a souvenir posy for Gordon, and so we parted from the two—so great, so dignified in the hour of defeat.
When I reached home, it was well I had a douceur for my general. He held in his hand the New York Tribune of the day, and pointed an indignant finger to a communication in which the public was warned against the incendiary principles of "persons in the family of a noted Southern lawyer, now resident on Brooklyn Heights, who had, in the moment of the nation's rejoicing, displayed in a window a piratical flag, deep-bordered and ominous." My poor little jest with my neighbor! My humble black shawl!
Having had an invitation to lunch with Mrs. Grant at the Fifth Avenue Hotel next day, I thought it wise, as well as agreeable, to accept, seeing I had been published as a suspicious character. I needed Republican support. I told Mrs. Grant of my interview with General Hancock. "Nice fellow! Nice fellow!" she exclaimed with feeling. "You know I'm a Democrat," she said. "What's more, I'm Secesh, particularly as the Republicans wouldn't nominate Ulysses for a third term."
"Oh, but," said I, "you mustn't forget the story of the Fisherman and the Flounder."
She had never heard the story of Dame Isabel, the fisherman's ambitious wife, and laughed heartily over the application to herself. "All the same," she protested, "I was not unreasonable—I didn't wish to be Lord of the spheres—only wife of the President of one country."
A short time before this the (Massachusetts) Springfield Republican was kind enough to lend a helping hand, in the guise of a kind word to my dear general, which was quoted by the New York Times, January 22, 1878. That I should have preserved it so many years, fully asserts my appreciation of the paper's kindness.
"The New York correspondent of the Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican writes: 'Roger Pryor is pegging away very quietly in his law office, with increasing business, though it is not of a very conspicuous character nor very remunerative, I imagine, for he does a great deal of work for poor people; but he sticks so closely to his business that comparatively few people know that he is here, and one of the most characteristic representatives of the Southern statesman. He is in constant communication with leading Southern men, and knows the true inwardness of the Southern feeling and policy in regard to "scaling" the state debts. He is an intense anti-repudiationist, and the very thought of a thing so dishonorable makes him shiver with rage. But he is fully persuaded that the Southern people are determined to cut down their obligations materially, and throw overboard the carpet-bag debts altogether, if possible. He thinks that when the federal government required the Southern people to repudiate their Confederate war debts, it taught them a lesson in repudiation which they are now disposed to better. The public men of the South have not done their duty in frowning down this feeling and teaching the people a better policy, to say nothing of honesty. Pryor is the soul of honor, is chock full of the old-fashioned Virginia chivalric sentiment, and altogether too high-minded and large-thoughted to mix himself with our local politics. And all the democrats who know him and are not politicians agree that he ought to be in Congress.'"
He was ardently opposed to repudiation, and has often expressed indignation that the South was required to repudiate its Confederate war debts. As to his being in Congress, he was offered a few years later the nomination by Tammany, which would have meant sure election—but how could he pay the assessment demanded by that organization? Because he could not, he was compelled to decline the honor of going back to his old seat from the state of his adoption.
Mrs. Grant did me the honor to invite me to a reception she was giving "to meet General and Mrs. Sheridan." "Of course you'll not go," my husband suggested. "How can you meet General Sheridan?" "Why not?" I said. "If he can stand it, I can."