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the 1st of August, 1879, he wrote to me: ‘At the end of twenty-six months I dread going back, and would not if there were a line of steamers between here and Australia.
But I shall go to my quiet little home in Galena, and remain there until the cold drives me away.
Then I shall probably go South—possibly to Havana and Mexico—to remain until April.’
On the 30th of the same month he wrote to me: ‘I do not feel bad over the information——gave you. I am not a candidate for any office, nor would I hold one that required any manoeuvring or sacrifice to obtain.’
The enthusiasm that attended his welcome was greater than the most sanguine had anticipated, and gave him the keenest gratification.
In December he wrote me a long account of it from Philadelphia.
In this letter he said: ‘To-day I start for Cuba and Mexico.’
But he continued: ‘I expect to be back in Galena as soon as the weather gets pleasant in the spring, and to remain there until time to go to Long Branch.
I will then have the summer to arrange for a permanent home and occupation.
It may be the [Nicaragua] canal, in which case I shall live in New York City.
It must be employment or a country home.
My means will not admit of a city home without employment to supplement them.’
I replied that I thought the country would find an employment for him that would require him to live in Washington.
But to this he made no response.
In April I returned to the United States and found that he had already arrived from Mexico and gone as he intended to his little home in Galena.
The country was at this time in the full flood of excitement that precedes the Presidential nominations.
Grant's stubbornness in returning had produced exactly the result that his friends had foreseen.
Time was given for the opposition to crystallize; his rivals recovered from their first shock of astonishment at his popularity; the dislike entertained in many quarters for a third term was worked up vigorously, and the political world was in the
S. S. Scranton and Co., Hartford, 1887.
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