第69章 GOVERNORS OF NEW YORK STATE(3)
"I rang the bell," he said, "and when the door was opened I saw Governor Tilden coming down the stairs. I rushed in and told him hastily who I was before the man at the door could stop me, and he invited me into his library. I stated my mission, and he said he was so overwhelmed with applications that he did not think he could do anything. 'But, governor,' I said, 'my case differs from all others. My congregation is composed of miners, honest, hardworking people. They have hitherto been Republicans on the protection issue, but they were so impressed by you as a great reformer that they all voted for you in the last election.' The governor said: 'Tell that story again.' So I started again to tell him about my church, but he interrupted me, saying: 'Not that, but about the election.' So I told him again about their having, on account of their admiration for him as a reformer, turned from the Republican party and voted the Democratic ticket. Then the governor said: 'Well, I think you have a most meritorious case, and so I will give you all I have.'"Doctor Buckley interrupted him hastily, saying: "Great heavens, are you going to build a cathedral?""No," answered the clergyman; "all he had in his pocket was two dollars and fifty cents."Governor Tilden had many followers and friends whose admiration for him amounted almost to adoration. They believed him capable of everything, and they were among the most intelligent and able men of the country.
John Bigelow, journalist, author, and diplomat, was always sounding his greatness, both with tongue and pen. Abram S. Hewitt was an equally enthusiastic friend and admirer. Both of these gentlemen, the latter especially, were, I think, abler than Mr. Tilden, but did not have his hypnotic power.
I was dining one night with Mr. Hewitt, whose dinners were always events to be remembered, when Mr. Tilden became the subject of discussion. After incidents illustrating his manifold distinctions had been narrated, Mr. Hewitt said that Mr. Tilden was the only one in America and outside of royalties in Europe who had some blue-labelled Johannisberger. This famous wine from the vineyards of Prince Metternich on the Rhine was at that time reported to be absorbed by the royal families of Europe.
Our host said: "The bouquet of this wonderful beverage is unusually penetrating and diffusing, and a proof is that one night at a dinner in the summer, with the windows all open, the guests noticed this peculiar aroma in the air. I said to them that Governor Tilden had opened a bottle of his Johannisberger."The governor's residence was on the other side of Gramercy Park from Mr. Hewitt's. The matter was so extraordinary that everybody at the table went across the park, and when they were admitted they found the governor in his library enjoying his bottle of blue-labelled Johannisberger.
When Mr. Tilden was elected governor, my friend, General Husted, was speaker of the assembly, which was largely Republican. The governor asked General Husted to come down in the evening, because he wanted to consult him about the improvements and alterations necessary for the Executive Mansion, and to have the speaker secure the appropriation. During the discussion the governor placed before the speaker a bottle of rare whiskey, with the usual accompaniments. In front of the governor was a bottle of his Johannisberger and a small liqueur glass, a little larger than a thimble, from which the governor would from time to time taste a drop of this rare and exquisite fluid. The general, after a while, could not restrain his curiosity any longer and said:
"Governor, what is that you are drinking?"The governor explained its value and the almost utter impossibility of securing any.
"Well, governor," said Speaker Husted, "I never saw any before and I think I will try it." He seized the bottle, emptied it in his goblet and announced to the astonished executive that he was quite right in his estimate of its excellence.
The governor lost a bottIe of his most cherished treasure but received from the Republican legislature all the appropriation he desired for the Executive Mansion.
It has been my good fortune to know well the governors of our State of New York, commencing with Edmund D. Morgan. With many of them I was on terms of close intimacy. I have already spoken of Governors Seymour, Fenton, Dix, Tilden, Cleveland, and Roosevelt.
It might be better to confine my memory to those who have joined the majority.
Lucius Robinson was an excellent executive of the business type, as also were Alonzo B. Cornell and Levi P. Morton. Frank S. Black was in many ways original. He was an excellent governor, but very different from the usual routine. In the Spanish-American War he had a definite idea that the National Guard of our State should not go into the service of the United States as regiments, but as individual volunteers. The Seventh Regiment, which was the crack organization of the Guard, was severely criticised because they did not volunteer. They refused to go except as the Seventh Regiment, and their enemies continued to assail them as tin soldiers.
General Louis Fitzgerald and Colonel Appleton came to me very much disturbed by this condition. General Russell A. Alger, secretary of war, was an intimate friend of mine, and I went to Washington and saw him and the president on the acute condition affecting the reputation of the Seventh Regiment.
General Alger said: "We are about to make a desperate assault upon the fortifications of Havana. Of course there will be many casualties and the fighting most severe. Will the Seventh join that expedition?"The answer of General Fitzgerald and Colonel Appleton was emphatic that the Seventh would march with full ranks on the shortest possible notice. Governor Black would not change his view of how the National Guard should go, and so the Seventh was never called.
It seems only proper that I should make a record of this patriotic proposition made by this organization.