I was at
dinner with my family at a hotel in Washington when General Corbin joined
us. 'Will you,' he abruptly interjected, 'accept the chairmanship of the
board of visitors to the academy this coming June?'
"'What do you want of me?' I asked.
"'It is the academy's centenary, which we propose to celebrate, and we want
an orator.'
"'General Corbin,' said I, 'you are coming at me in a most enticing way.
I know all about West Point. Here at Washington I grew up with it. I have
been fighting legislative battles for the Army all my life. That you
Yankees should come to a ragged old rebel like me for such a service is a
distinction indeed, and I feel immensely honored. But which page of the
court calendar made you a plural? Whom do you mean by "we"?'
"'Why,' he replied in serio-comic vein, 'the President, the Secretary of
War and Me, myself.'
"I promised him to think it over and give him an answer. Next day I
received a letter from the President, making the formal official tender and
expressing the hope that I would not decline it. Yet how could I accept it
with the work ahead of me? It was certain that if I became a part of the
presidential junket and passed a week in the delightful company promised
me, I would be unfit for the loyal duty I owed my belongings and my party,
and so reluctantly--more reluctantly than I can tell you--I declined,
obliging them to send for Gen. Horace Porter and bring him over from across
the ocean, where he was ably serving as Ambassador to France.
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