The first of these was during the hottest weather Ihave ever known. There were few people at the capital who could leave it, and at the Arlington Hotel there were not more than a dozen guests. All were distressed by the heat. Moreover, there was an amazing complication of political matters at this time, calculated to prostrate the Washington officials, even if the heat had not done so; and, among these, those relating to American control in the Philippine Islands; the bitter struggle then going on in China between the representatives of foreign powers, including our own, and the Chinese insurrectionists; the difficulties arising out of the successful result of the Spanish War in Cuba; complications in the new administration of Porto Rico; and the myriad of questions arising in a heated political campaign, which was then running fast and furious.
Arriving at the White House, I passed an hour with the President, and found him, of all men in Washington, the only one who seemed not at all troubled by the heat, by the complications in China, by the difficulties in Cuba and Porto Rico, or by the rush and whirl of the campaign. He calmly discussed with me the draft of a political note which was to be issued next day in answer to the Russian communications regarding the mode of procedure in China, which had started some very trying questions; and then showed me a letter from ex-President Cleveland declining a position on the International Arbitration Tribunal at the Hague, and accepted my suggestion not to consider it a final answer, but to make another effort for Mr. Cleveland's acceptance. During this first visit of mine, the Secretary of State and the First Assistant Secretary were both absent, having been almost prostrated by the extreme heat. At a second visit in October, I again saw the President, found him in the same equable frame of mind, not allowing anything to trouble him, quietly discharging his duties in the calm faith that all would turn out well. Dining with Secretary Hay, I mentioned this equanimity of the President, when he said: ``Yes; it is a source of perpetual amazement to us all. He allows no question, no matter how complicated or vexatious, to disturb him. Some time since, at a meeting of the cabinet, one of its members burst out into a bitter speech against some government official who had been guilty of gross rudeness, and said, `Mr. President, he has insulted you, and he has insulted me'; thereupon the President said calmly, `Mr. Secretary, if he has insulted ME, I forgive him;if he has insulted you, I shall remove him from office.' ''
Newspapers were teeming with misrepresentations of the President's course, but they failed to ruffle him. On his asking if I was taking any part in the campaign, Ireferred to a speech that I had made on the Fourth of July in Leipsic, and another to the Cornell University students just before my departure, with the remark that I felt that a foreign diplomatic representative coming home and throwing himself eagerly into the campaign might possibly do more harm than good. In this remark he acquiesced, and said: ``I shall not, myself, make any speeches whatever; nor shall I give any public receptions. My record is before the American people, and they must pass judgment upon it. In this respect I shall go back to what seems to me the better practice of the early Presidents.''
I was struck by the justice of this, and told him so, although I felt obliged to say that he would be under fearful temptation to speak before the campaign had gone much farther. He smiled, but held to his determination, despite the fact that his opponent invaded all parts of the Union in an oratorical frenzy, in one case making a speech at half-past two in the morning to a crowd assembled at a railway station, and making during one day thirty-one speeches, teeming with every kind of campaign misrepresentation;but the President was faithful to his promise, uttered no word in reply, and was relected.
