answered the senators, ``we like him very much--very much indeed.'' ``Well,'' said Sawyer, ``I will tell you a story before you go to the White House if you will agree when you get back, to tell me--`honest Injun'--whether it suits your case.'' Both laughingly agreed, and Mr. Sawyer then told them the following story: When he was a young man with very small means, he and two or three other young wood-choppers made up an expedition for lumber-cutting. As they were too poor to employ a cook for their camp, they agreed to draw lots, and that the one on whom the lot fell should be cook, but only until some one of the company found fault; then the fault-finder should become cook in his turn. Lots being drawn, one of them, much to his disgust, was thus chosen cook, and toward the close of the day he returned to camp, before the others, to get supper ready. Having taken from the camp stores a large quantity of beans, he put them into a pot boiling over the fire, as he had seen his mother do in his boyhood, and then proceeded to pour in salt. Unfortunately the salt-box slipped in his hand, and he poured in much more than he had intended--in fact, the whole contents of the box. On the return of the woodmen to the cabin, ravenously hungry, they proceeded to dish out the boiled beans, but the first one who put a spoonful in his mouth instantly cried out with a loud objurgation, ``Thunder and lightning! this dish is all salt''; but, in a moment, remembering that if he found fault he must himself become cook, he said very gently, ``BUT I LIKE SALT.''
Both senators laughed and agreed that they would give an honest report of their feelings to Senator Sawyer when they had seen the President. On their return, Sawyer met them and said, ``Well, honest Injun, how was it?''
They both laughed and said, ``Well, we like salt.''
Among many interesting experiences I recall especially a dinner at the house of Mr. Fairchild, Secretary of the Treasury. He spoke of the civil service, and said that a short time previously President Cleveland had said to him, regarding the crowd pressing for office: ``Asuggestion to these office-seekers as to the good of the country would make them faint.''
During this dinner I happened to be seated between Senators John Sherman of Ohio and Vance of Georgia, and presently Mr. Vance--one of the jolliest mortals Ihave ever met--turned toward his colleague, Senator Sherman, and said, very blandly: ``Senator, I am glad to see you back from Ohio; I hope you found your fences in good condition.'' There was a general laugh, and when it was finished Senator Sherman told me in a pleasant way how the well-known joke about his ``looking after his fences'' arose. He said that he was the owner of a large farm in Ohio, and that some years previously his tenant wrote urging him most earnestly to improve its fences, so that finally he went to Ohio to look into the matter.
On arriving there, he found a great crowd awaiting him and calling for a speech, when he excused himself by saying that he had not come to Ohio on political business, but had merely come ``to look after his fences.''
The phrase caught the popular fancy, and ``to look after one's fences'' became synonymous with minding one's political safeguards.
I remember also an interesting talk with Mr. Bayard, who had been one of the most eminent senators in his time, who was then Secretary of State, and who became, at a later period, ambassador of the United States to Great Britain. Speaking of office-seeking, he gave a comical account of the developing claims of sundry applicants for foreign missions, who, he said, ``are at first willing to go, next anxious to go, and finally angry because they cannot go.''
On another social occasion, the possibility of another attempt at secession by States being discussed, General Butler of South Carolina said: ``No more secession for me.'' To this, Senator Gibson, who also had been a brigadier-general in the Confederate service, and had seen much hard fighting, said, ``And no more for me.'' Butler rejoined, ``We may have to help in preventing others from seceding one of these days.'' I was glad to note that both Butler and Gibson spoke thoroughly well of their former arch-enemy, General Grant.
Very interesting was it to meet again Mr. George Bancroft. He referred to his long service as minister at Berlin, expressed his surprise that Bismarck, whom he remembered as fat, had become bony, and was very severe against both clericals and liberals who had voted against allowing aid to Bismarck in the time of his country's greatest necessity.
I also met my Cornell colleague Goldwin Smith, the former Oxford professor and historian, who expressed his surprise and delight at the perfect order and decorum of the crowd, numbering nearly five thousand persons, at the presidential levee the night before. In order to understand what an American crowd was like, instead of going into the White House by the easier way, as he was entitled by his invitation to do, he had taken his place in the long procession far outside the gate and gradually moved through the grounds into the presidential presence, taking about an hour for the purpose. He said that there was never any pressing, crowding, or impatience, and he compared the crowd most favorably with any similar body in a London street.
