II
In Grover Cleveland a total stranger had arrived at the front of affairs.
The Democrats, after a rule of more than half a century, had been out of
power twenty-four years. They could scarce realize at first that they were
again in power. The new chieftain proved more of an unknown quantity than
had been suspected. William Dorsheimer, a life-long crony, had brought the
two of us together before Cleveland's election to the governorship of the
Empire State as one of a group of attractive Buffalo men, most of whom
might be said to have been cronies of mine, Buffalo being a delightful
halfway stop-over in my frequent migrations between Kentucky and the
Eastern seaboard. As in the end we came to a parting of the ways I want to
write of Mr. Cleveland as a historian and not as a critic.
He said to Mr. Carlisle after one of our occasional tiffs: "Henry will
never like me until God makes me over again." The next time we met,
referring to this, I said: "Mr. President, I like you very much--very much
indeed--but sometimes I don't like some of your ways."
There were in point of fact two Clevelands--before marriage and after
marriage--the intermediate Cleveland rather unequal and indeterminate.
Assuredly no one of his predecessors had entered the White House so wholly
ignorant of public men and national affairs. Stories used to be told
assigning to Zachary Taylor this equivocal distinction. But General Taylor
had grown up in the army and advanced in the military service to a chief
command, was more or less familiar with the party leaders of his time,
and was by heredity a gentleman.
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