personal gratification in the fact that the ticket selected at Chicago
bore his name. His faithfulness in public duties, his firmness and
sagacity in political affairs, so well understood by his fellow-citizens
in New York, had met with national recognition and won for him this
well-deserved honor. Their efforts in his support would be prompted, not
only by personal zeal and enthusiasm, but by the warmth and zeal of
strong personal friendship and esteem. That they might have an
opportunity more fully to express to him their sincere congratulations
and hearty good wishes, they invited him to meet them at dinner at the
Union League Club.

General Arthur, in acknowledging the receipt of this letter, expressed
his sense of the kindness which had prompted both the invitation itself
and the flattering assurances of confidence and regard by which it was
accompanied. If circumstances had permitted, he should have been pleased
to have accepted the proffered hospitality, and for that purpose no more
congenial spot could have been selected than the headquarters of the
Union League Club, an association so widely famed for its patriotic zeal
and energy, and so efficient in the support of the principles and policy
of the Republican party. He was constrained, however, from
considerations of a private nature known to many, to decline the
invitation.

On the fifteenth of July, 1880, General Arthur formally accepted the
position assigned to him by the Chicago convention, and expressed at
length his own personal views on the election laws, public service
appointments, the financial problems of the day, common schools, the
tariff, national improvements, and a Republican ascendency, saying, in
conclusion, that he did not doubt that success awaited the Republican
party, and that its triumph would assure a just, economical, and