The opposing Presidential candidates in 1884 were Grover Cleveland and James G. Blaine. It was the wonder of the world that the American people did not make Mr. Blaine President. There was a world-wide amazement also at the abuse which preceded Mr. Cleveland's election. The whole thing was a spectacle of the ignorance of men about great men. All sorts of defamatory reports were spread abroad about them. Men of mind are also men of temperament. There are two men in every one man, and for this reason Mr. Blaine was the most misunderstood of great men. To the end of his brilliant life calumny pursued him. There were all sorts of reports about him.
One series of reports said that Mr. Blaine was almost unable to walk; that he was too sick to be seen; that death was for him close at hand, and his obituaries were in type in many of the printing offices.
The other series of reports said that Mr. Blaine was vigorous; went up the front steps of his house at a bound; was doing more work than ever, and was rollicking with mirth. The baleful story was ascribed to his enemies, who wanted the great man out of the world. The reassuring story was ascribed to his friends, who wanted to keep him in the ranks of Presidential possibilities.
The fact is that both reports were true. There were two Mr. Blaines, as there are two of every mercurial temperament. Of the phlegmatic, slow-pulsed man there is only one. You see him once and you see him as he always is. Not so with the nervous organisation. He has as many moods as the weather, as many changes as the sky. He is bright or dull, serene or tempestuous, cold or hot, up or down, January or August, day or night, Arctic or tropical. At Washington, in 1889, I saw the two Blaines within two hours. I called with my son to see the great Secretary of State at his office, and although it was his day for seeing foreign diplomats, he received us with great cordiality. His face was an illumination; his voice resonant; his manner animated; he was full of gesticulation. He walked up and down the room describing things under discussion; fire in his eye, spring in his step. Although about fifty-nine years of age, he looked forty-five, and strong enough to wrestle with two or three ordinary men. He had enough vitality for an athlete.
We parted. My son and I went down the street, made two or three other calls, and on the way noticed a carriage passing with two or three people in it. My attention was startled by the appearance in that carriage of what seemed a case of extreme invalidism. The man seemed somewhat bolstered up. My sympathies were immediately aroused, and I said to my son, "Look at that sick man riding yonder." When the carriage came nearer to us, my son said, "That is Mr. Blaine." Looking closely at the carriage I found that this was so. He had in two hours swung from vigour to exhaustion, from the look of a man good for twenty years of successful work to a man who seemed to be taking his last ride. He simply looked as he felt on both occasions. We had seen the two Blaines.
How much more just we would be in our judgment of men if we realised that a man may be honestly two different men, and how this theory would explain that which in every man of high organisation seems sometimes to be contradictory! Aye, within five minutes some of us with mercurial natures can remember to have been two entirely different men in two entirely different worlds. Something said to us cheering or depressing; some tidings announced, glad or sad; some great kindness done for us, or some meanness practised on us have changed the zone, the pulsation, the physiognomy, the physical, the mental, the spiritual condition, and we become no more what we were than summer is winter, or midnoon is midnight, or frosts are flowers.
The air was full of political clamour and strife in the election of 1884. Never in this country was there a greater temptation to political fraud, because, after four month's battle, the counting of the ballots revealed almost a tie. I urged self-control among men who were angry and men who were bitter. The enemies of Mr. Blaine were not necessarily the friends of Mr. Cleveland. The enemies of Mr. Cleveland were bitter, but they were afraid of Mr. Blaine; for he was a giant intellectually, practically, physically, and he stood in the centre of a national arena of politics, prepared to meet all challenge. Mr. Cleveland never really opposed him. He faced him on party issues, not as an individual antagonist. The excitement was intense during the suspense that followed the counting of the ballots, and Mr. Cleveland went into the White House amidst a roar of public opinion so confused and so vicious that there was no certainty of ultimate order in the country. In after years I enjoyed his confidence and friendship, and I learned to appreciate the stability and reserve of his nature. In a Milestone beyond this, I have recalled a conversation I had with him at the White House, and recorded my impressions of him. Above the clamour of these troublesome times, I raised my voice and said that in the distant years to come the electors of New York, Alabama, and Maine, and California, would march together down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington for the discharge of the great duties of the Electoral College.
The storm passed, and the Democrats were in power. It was the calm that follows an electrical disturbance. The paroxysm of filth and moral death was over.
Mr. Vanderbilt, converted into a philanthropist, gave five hundred thousand dollars to a medical institute, and the world began to see new possibilities in great fortunes. That a railroad king could also be a Christian king was a hopeful tendency of the times. These were the acts that tended to smother the activities of Communism in America.
In the previous four years the curious astronomer had discovered the evolution of a new world in the sky, and so while on earth there were convulsions, in the skies there were new beauties born. With the rising sun of the year 1885, one of our great and good men of Brooklyn saw it with failing eyesight. Doctor Noah Hunt Schenck, pastor of St. Ann's Episcopal Church, was stricken. For fifteen years he had blessed our city with his benediction. The beautiful cathedral which grew to its proportions of grandeur under Doctor Schenck's pastorate, stood as a monument to him.