But the ‘show business’ was only beginning; and no sooner was the war at an end, than honours fell thick and fast on the hero of the long struggle. Office, wealth, and power were all within his grasp, and at the nation’s call he took them up, and right wisely did he use them. Twice he served in the highest and proudest office an American citizen can hold; and at the expiration of his second term of office in 1876, he set out on a long-desired trip round the world. How he was received with more than kingly honour the wide-world over, is within the memory of all. His entry to a city was the signal for a burst of enthusiastic welcome, and everywhere he was fêted to the utmost of the people’s power. On every hand he was met by the call for speeches, and speech-making he thoroughly detested; yet the few clear, concise sentences, bristling with shrewd common-sense, and overflowing with genuine feeling, to which he confined his remarks, will long be remembered by those who heard them.
‘Although a soldier by education and profession,’ he told the citizens of London, ‘I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have never advocated it except as a means of peace.’ And again, to Prince Bismarck he made a somewhat similar remark: ‘I never went into the army without regret, and never retired without pleasure!’
Through Europe, and home by India, Siam, China, and Japan, went the General and his party, welcomed and fêted everywhere. The long tour came to an end at San Francisco, on September 20, 1879, and the journey thence to the Eastern States was one long triumphal progress. The General took up his residence in New York, and though an abortive attempt was made to secure his return for a third time to the White House in 1880, he took little or no further share of public life. His fortune he invested in a business in which his son was partner with a man named Ward, and in the downfall of this concern, the General lost his all. With unflinching courage, he faced the situation, conscious though he was of the formation of that dread cancer in the throat that in the end proved too strong for him. Magazines were willing to pay large prices for articles from his pen, and publishers eager to issue his autobiography. So, with a brave heart, the General set himself to fight his last battle.
The news of his terrible position soon became known, and a public subscription was proposed, that would quickly have restored Grant to more than his former wealth; but he would have none of it. Congress, greatly to his delight, placed him on the retired list of the army. ‘They have brought us back our old commander,’ said Mrs Grant when she heard the news. But it was not for long. On the 23d of July 1885, the battle came to an end, and ‘Unconditional Surrender Grant’ gave in at last to the great conqueror of all.
A GOLDEN ARGOSY.
A NOVELETTE.
CHAPTER XII.
Imagine a man paying forty thousand pounds into the Bank of England, and learning to-morrow that that stupendous financial concern had stopped payment! Imagine Lady Clara Vere de Vere discovering her wonderful parure, with its European renown, to be paste! Imagine the feelings of Thomas Carlyle when the carelessness of John Stuart Mill destroyed the labour of years! Imagine poor Euclid’s state of mind when his wife burnt his books! In short, imagine, each of you, the greatest calamity you can think of, and you will have some faint notion of the feelings of the quartet in Mr Carver’s office at Mr Bates’s disconcerting discovery.
For a few minutes, silence reigned supreme, and then Edgar commenced to whistle. It was not a particularly cheerful air, but it sufficed to arouse the others from their stupefaction.
‘If I had not been an infatuated old idiot,’ said Mr Carver, hurling the unfortunate volume of romance with unnecessary violence across the room, ‘I should have foreseen this;’ and murmuring something about strait-waistcoats and the thick-headedness of society in general, he lapsed into gloomy silence.