substantially for a third term, all issues will be merged in that issue,
and in my judgment you will not carry a state in the Union."

As if much impressed and with a show of feeling he said: "It may be so. At
any rate I will not do it. If the convention nominates me I will promptly
send my declination. If it nominates me and adjourns I will call it
together again and it will have to name somebody else."

As an illustration of the implacability which pursued him I may mention
that among many leading Republicans to whom I related the incident most
of them discredited his sincerity, one of them--a man of national
importance--expressing the opinion that all along he was artfully playing
for the nomination. This I do not believe. Perhaps he was never quite fixed
in his mind. The presidency is a wondrous lure. Once out of the White
House--what else and what----?



II


Upon his return from one of his several foreign journeys a party of some
hundred or more of his immediate personal friends gave him a private dinner
at a famous uptown restaurant. I was placed next him at table. It goes
without saying that we had all sorts of a good time--he Caesar and I
Brutus--the prevailing joke the entente between the two.

"I think," he began his very happy speech, "that I am the bravest man
that ever lived, for here I have been sitting three hours by the side of
Brutus--have repeatedly seen him clutch his knife--without the blink of an