poisonous elements responsible for most, if not all, of the heartaches and back-aches freely complained of.

BIGELOW TO HUNTINGTON

NEW YORK, March 6, '67.

My dear Friend:

Your favor of the 6th February only came to hand last evening. From the pleasure it gave me I conclude that your compositions, like wine, are benefitted by much travel.

Of course I want the bustette of B. F., and if you come across any of the early engravings of him, especially that in the cap, I will thank you to secure it.

In the Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire du Protestantisme français of the 15th January, 1867, there is a reference to a letter from Fénelon in another letter written from Jouy en Josas, bearing date 10th December, '66, by one Mr. Labouchère. If it be possible, as it no doubt is, to get me a copy of that Bulletin at the office or Agence Centrale No. 174 the Bulletin which contains Fénélon's letter, not the reference to it you will make me one of the

happiest of men. That you may send me by mail or legation bag as may be most convenient. I got Senarmont's story. It contains nothing additional. I shall not fail to profit by your suggestion about cleaning the Franklin.

Your offer of a copy of Loubat's screed had been anticipated by its author. Copies were sent to all the members of Congress. Seward was so impressed with it that he thought it unfair to require any more service from him, and has restored him to the post of honor. His career was short but uncommon brilliant, as was that of your friend Norton, who did his stint of Exhibition work to the Senate's entire satisfaction before the Exposition opened. He will now be able to give his exclusive attention to his bank, & the President I presume will have to pay full price for his liquor.

I do not yet know where I am to instal myself and library; it is the subject of dreams and meditations. I have no country house large enough, and it takes much time and more monies to build, not to speak of the making a fool of one self, proverbially speaking, thereby. City houses are very high and city life very

expensive, yielding little for the money of what I enjoy. If Dick Hunt' had not gone off to Paris this summer, I would have set him at work upon a house, but now I do not know what to do. Tantalus, I think, had a comparatively good time to what I am experiencing with my large and muchly unexplored library inaccessible to me & liable to remain so for months to come. occasionally threaten to do desperate things.

I

I returned from Washington on the 2d. instant. The President was raining vetoes, which rolled off of Congress like water off a duck's back. There was but one senator who listened to a word of his veto of the Tenure of Office bill, and that was Harris of New York, who wishes a mission or a judgeship or an old pair of pantaloons or something. I never saw Seward looking better nor heard him talk better. His wound has left a great scar upon his face without having seriously deformed its expression. His mind is clear, and he is the only man in Washington who appeared cool and deliberate. Any word of moderation there is a ground of suspicion. To require proof of the most malignant and improbable rumor is attributed to political unsoundness. Seward says it is as much as he can do to escape being tried with Surratt for conniving at the attempt upon his own life. They don't cut throats any longer here, but the work they make of characters is something only paralleled in the declining days of the Girondists. The opposition take the ground that we have no President properly speaking, that the incumbent must be considered & treated as a nullity, and that Congress, therefore, is bound to engross all the executive functions it can lay its hands on. It is acting accordingingly. The President has no longer power to remove one of his cabinet. Sumner gave me as a reason for voting against the confirmation of Dix, the necessity of requiring abroad the same loyalty to Congress now that was "due to the President when we had one." In other words, he would unite the legislative & executive power in the same hands.

Seward thinks Benjamin will prove to have been accessory to the murder of Lincoln.2 He wished to save Motley and the other Lincoln officers, and hence the letter3 to which M. made himself a

'R. M. Hunt, the architect.

2Benjamin, embracing the earliest opportunity after the capture of Davis to take refuge in England for the remainder of his life, countenanced Seward's suspicion when he said that the President and Secretary of State only in the United States, could have raised any gold at that time for any purpose.

'III, 636 n. ante.

CHARLES EAMES

49

martyr. Oh what a way we have of doing things and of being done! As for my own part, I scarcely know how to behave here. I am not excited enough to share the passions of either side, and yet I find it very difficult to follow the quiet course which my taste & judgment dictate in the language of Tacitus, "Inter abruptam contumaciam et deforme obsequium pergere iter." I have been tempted with offers to return to journalism by people who try to persuade me that I may do so much good by talking a few sober words to the drunken crowd. But I do not flatter myself, nor do I mean to be flattered, out of my independence. This political fermentation is natural, inevitable, & purifying, and useful. It will work out its office without me & I mean that it shall have all the credit of it.

No President was ever so powerless as Johnson is. Even the Moderados are afraid to be seen with him.

My wife says I must come to bed "& stop that scratching," so good night

Your friend & servant

On the 19th of March the Washington press announced the death of Charles Eames, a person to whom I felt under very great obligations, without owing him anything but friendship. I made his acquaintance at our common boarding house in Grand street in 1837. For some years and until his marriage, when I was his best man, we were roommates. He was five or six years my senior. No other person ever did so much by personal intercourse to develop in me a serious literary taste. He had a faculty of analysis and statement which I have rarely seen equalled, and scarcely surpassed even by Gladstone. He had also like many, if not most, men who accomplish much for good in this world's estimation, an insatiable appetite for praise. I had myself while in college a roommate named Hoyt who exhibited the same canine appetite. Like Eames, he was also a man of otherwise charming dispositions and superior talents. I feel greatly indebted to both not only for their loyal friendship but no less for the effect of this infirmity in them upon myself. I am not sure that praise was not quite as agreeable a condiment to me as it appeared to be to them, but I have learned that we receive the best lessons in life from observing in others our own failings,