dispersed.

In those days, it being the business of my life to turn day into night and
night into day, it was not my habit to seek my bed much before the presses
began to thunder below, and this night proving no exception, and being
tempted by a party of Kentuckians, who had come, some to back me and some
to watch me, I did not quit their agreeable society until the "wee short
hours ayont the twal." Before turning in I glanced at the early edition
of the Commercial, to see that something--I was too tired to decipher
precisely what--had happened. It was, in point of fact, the arrival about
midnight of Gen. Frank P. Blair and Governor B. Gratz Brown.

I had in my possession documents that would have induced at least one of
them to pause before making himself too conspicuous. The Quadrilateral,
excepting Reid, knew this. We had separated upon the adjournment of the
convention. I being across the river in Covington, their search was
unavailing. I was not to be found. They were in despair. When having had
a few hours of rest I reached the convention hall toward noon it was too
late.

I got into the thick of it in time to see the close, not without an angry
collision with that one of the newly arrived actors whose coming had
changed the course of events, with whom I had lifelong relations of
affectionate intimacy. Sailing but the other day through Mediterranean
waters with Joseph Pulitzer, who, then a mere youth, was yet the secretary
of the convention, he recalled the scene; the unexpected and not over
attractive appearance of the governor of Missouri; his not very pleasing
yet ingenious speech; the stoical, almost lethargic indifference of Schurz.

"Carl Schurz," said Pulitzer, "was the most industrious and the least