especially to spare are exposed to what I think is not only ridicule but injustice. Your picture implies that the President adopts the reform for the purpose of commending a distasteful potion to those who have concocted it. I think, and therefore I say it frankly, that it injures everybody and the cause concerned. The one thing for which I have striven in the conduct of the paper is unity of sentiment. I don't think the pictures. and the text should be at variance, and it is possible to criticise a man severely in words without the least ridicule, but it can't be done in pictures. I do not know how I can more strongly protest than I have already done against the fatal policy of firing upon Republicans. Success is not assured by alienating those who up to the nomination have exactly the same rights as ourselves. Remem

ber it is not the body known as "the President's friends" who hate the reform, but it is the very men you ridicule who have really supported the movement and who mean what they say.

I do not assume any right whatever to control your action or to dictate in any manner. I protest to you as a friend against the injustice done to other friends and in a way of which I must bear the responsibility. Nor is it a personal protest only. The cause of the party, and therefore of the country, is in

jured. I support Compare with the preceding letter.

*

JUSTICE OF THE BAIL-EBIR RAILROAD (ISG) SMASH UP.

the President sincerely, but I respect the equal sincerity of my friends who differ. The situation is difficult, and our cause requires extreme delicacy of treatment. To-day I am to dine with Mr. Sumner, but how can I eat his bread, knowing that the paper with which I am identified holds him up to public contempt? Yesterday, when I defended the President to Mr. Schurz, he shook my hand warmly, and said, " At least we agree upon the point of Civil Service." What will his feelings be when he sees "my paper "?

66

My dear Nast, I am very sorely touched by your want of regard for my friendship, for I asked you not to do this very thing. I know, if you will excuse me, better than you can possibly know, the mischief.*

Very truly yours,

George William Curtis.

However much this rather remarkable letter may have appealed to Nast from the personal point of view, it was far from convincing him as a guide to warfare. That Curtis should consider his own personal affiliations before the greater cause of the nation's welfare was, to a man like Nast, who had never considered even life itself as against the cause of justice, a matter for scorn and contempt. That the editor should feel any delicacy in boldly attacking and satirizing the men who were attempting to destroy the President seemed to him silly and "Miss Nancyish" to an extreme degree. Curtis, with all his gifts, never understood the value of the open and direct warfare of Nast, while Nast found little to admire in the smooth and gentle rhetoric of Curtis.

"When he attacks a man with his pen it seems as if he were apologizing for the act," Nast once expressed himself. “I try to hit the enemy between the eyes and knock him down." Curtis's was the policy of pacification, while Nast's was that of annihilation.

"What I have written I can modify or recall later," Curtis

It is likely that Mr. Curtis overestimated the possible effect of the pictures. If a dignified body of senators could be alienated from their party by pictorial satire, their allegiance was hardly worth preserving.

THE "LIBERAL" CONSPIRATORS (WHO, YOU ALL KNOW, ARE HONORABLE MEN).

once said in the midst of a discussion with the artist. cannot do that with a picture."

"You

"I only draw what I believe to be right," retorted Nast," and I do not wish to recall it."

Gradually there grew up between them a definite antagonism, which Nast with his usual frankness took little pains to conceal. On the other hand, Curtis, the courtier and diplomat, seldom displayed any feeling, always greeting the cartoonist with a smile, and not infrequently going out of his way to oblige and conciliate, as is shown by a number of letters in which he congratulates Nast on his excellent work, or seeks to arrange for him certain profitable engagements. The oft-repeated statements of a partisan press that Thomas Nast was merely a tool to serve the will, and give expression to the ideas of George William Curtis, appear rather absurd in the face of these developments.

With the beginning of February appeared a cartoon entitled "Cincinnatus "-one of the best of the year, and, as was so often the case, a prophecy. Greeley the editor is offering the combined Republican and Democratic nominations to Greeley the farmer, while in the background appears the Democratic Donkey kicking fiercely at being yoked with a rather unhappy ox, intended to typify Mr. Greeley's Republican following. It was not believed at the time that Greeley was a Democratic presidential possibility. Nevertheless, Nast, with his usual insight, did not fail to strike the precise situation as it developed a few months later.

CHAPTER XXVI

WASHINGTON HONORS AND SOME LESSONS IN STATESMANSHIP

Nast now made a trip to Washington to look over the situation at close range. He had expected to make a brief visit, but social events detained him. That he was to be a power in the approaching campaign was recognized at the capital. The "Sword of Sheridan " had become as a memory. The "Pencil of Nast" had never been so keenly and trenchantly alive as at this moment. Dinners attended by Cabinet officers and presidential possibilities were given in his honor. At the White House, General Grant and his family received him in their home circle, and a life-long friendship began between the artist and soldier-president.

In frequent letters to the wife at home Nast, now in the first full tide of his great fame, tells us of his triumphs at the capital. What wonder if he was carried off his feet a little by the swing of it all-delighted yet dismayed-made dizzy yet keeping his head as best he could always holding fast to the life-line that anchored at his own fireside. In his first letter he speaks of his coming, and of the recent difference with Curtis.

The Harpers wanted me to go, and they did not. They thought it would be good to go, and they thought it would not, and I came near coming home again. But I decided that if I did not go now I would not go at all, and then I might be sorry for not going before the nominations. Mr. Curtis sent me another