was repudiated by his State, whose legislature forwarded resolutions demanding that he change his views or resign his seat. In refusing to obey he said:

"I cannot vote as these resolutions direct. I cannot and will not shrink from the responsibility which my position imposes. My duty as I see it

I will do, and I will vote against this bill."*

Nast's efforts on the silver question did not go unrecognized. Many letters came to him, both of praise and condemnation. Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll sent an appreciative letter (February 4, 1878), in which he said:

I have long wished to make your acquaintance, and shall avail myself of the first opportunity. I want to know the man who writes such wonderful essays and speeches without words. But letters of another sort were more plentiful, for the silver sentiment was strong throughout the land. Papers condemned him as a fool or a knave. The Graphic having failed to secure his services, now cartooned him on the front page of nearly every issue. Its favorite plan was to reproduce by a new processengraving certain of his former cartoons, done in the old "Inflation" days-at a time when silver, like gold, had been worth intrinsically its face value-and to present Uncle Sam as pointing them out to him and taunting him with his present sinfulness in rejecting the metal he had once deemed so worthy.

In spite of Senator Lamar's disregard of his constituency he was reëlected to the Senate in 1882 by a much larger majority than be had received six years before. In 1885 he was appointed Secretary of the Interior, and in 1887 an Associate Justice of the Supreme Bench. He died in 1893.

As a matter of fact Nast did not know that silver had been demonetized when he drew those first "specie" cartoons. It has been said that Grant himself did not know it, and that those who did were very few indeed. In one issue, the Graphic portrayed Uncle Sam as spanking Nast for his persistent wickedness. When the bill was finally passed, and vetoed by the President, and was passed again over his head, the Graphic rejoiced in its victory over the "pencil of Nast," and emphasized it with a quotation from the Chicago Tribune, which said:

The Graphic had the wisdom and sagacity to espouse the remonetizing of the old national money. When the caricaturing pencil of Nast was purchased to traduce the advocates of silver, the Graphic portrayed Mr. Tom Nast in cartoons that made him wince and his employers squirm.

The passage of the silver bill was in truth a humiliation. The cartoonist cared

nothing for the

Graphic's carica

tures, or the fact that a hundred other papers denounced him and rode him down. He grieved only in the reflection that he had fought what seemed a great wrong and had

failed. His first

comment on the matter was a picture of the discarded and half-forgotten Rag-baby,

GIVING U. S. HAIL COLUMBIA

(Columbia abusing Uncle Sam for his doubtful financial policy, resulting from

who having swallowed the silver dollar seemed to be reviving. In the same issue he relieved his spirit in a good cause with a full-page plea for the skeleton Army and Navy, against which new bills of reduction and retrenchment had been devised.

Uncle Sam, the trap still on his leg, now became a sort of a dissolute person who was inclined to disregard his obligations. The Fisheries Award of $5,500,000, allowed to England in settlement of a dispute which had been going on for the better part of a century, our National Uncle seemed willing to repudiate, or at most to settle in depreciated coin. We find him whittling a good deal at this stage, and sitting about the house and being abused by Columbia for his shiftlessness.

But in sections of the country large masses of the people rejoiced greatly, and from the tone of the "silver" press it would seem that the time of the millennium drew near. Naturally President Hayes fell more and more into disfavor. The few who approved his financial policy were likely to condemn his attitude toward the South, while the South, whose friendship he had hoped to win, regarded him as a usurper and rejected him accordingly. Yet it is probable that no man has ever tried more faithfully to be a good President than did Rutherford B. Hayes.

CHAPTER XLIII

A DULL SPRING AND TRIP ABROAD

At frequent intervals Major Pond renewed his endeavors to induce Nast to return to the lecture platform. Hathaway and Pond was the style of the lecture firm at this time, successors to the Redpath Lyceum Bureau. A single letter will convey an idea of the temptations in this direction with which the artist was still beset:

My Dear Mr. Nast:

Boston, June 6, 1878.

We

Beecher said the other day, "Nast is a statesman." want just such a statesman as you to lecture next season. Can't you be prevailed upon to give us a month-a week-a day? We will give you $300 a night for four or six weeks, and if you can give us the season we will make it as much of an object as possible. We will do everything that can be done to make your travels easy, and we will make no more nights a week than you can comfortably fill. I will go with you and take all the care of you that can be taken, will make your yoke easy and your burden light for you; and heavy for me as you like. Please reply yes. Kind regards to Mrs. Nast and the little folks.

Faithfully yours,

J. B. Pond.

It would seem hard to have resisted such offers as these,

especially as the cartoonist could have continued his work in the Weekly, the publishers being more than willing that he should be thus brought in personal contact with their public.

Yet he did not go. Money matters were easy with him, and the long travel and broken sleep were not to his taste. More than all, he was unhappy away from his home and family, in which he found ever his greatest comfort.

The anti-Chinese prejudice feeling began to manifest itself again during the early part of 1878. Uncle Sam still wearing the trap, as well as an expression of general disgust at his own decline, is made to say, "I hate the nigger because he is a citizen, and I hate the yellow dog because he will not become one,

Nast never had the slightest sympathy with any sort of organization or movement that did not mean the complete and absolute right of property ownership, as well as the permission to labor, accorded to every human being of whatsoever color or race. His first real antagonism to James G. Blaine began with the latter's advocacy of Chinese Exclusion.

Cartoons on Communism and on certain evil results of the silver legislation continued through a quiet spring, with here and there a comment on European affairs, a stroke for the Army,