Part 20

Mr. Blaine has been accustomed to sit up quite late at night with books, papers, and letters, and make up his sleep in the morning. He loves a good story, and keeps a fund on hand constantly, and they serve his purpose well. There is one he has enjoyed telling to knots of friends here and there, and especially when friends have gathered at his table. The Maine law, in the interest of temperance, was a leading issue in the state during Mr. Blaine’s connection with the _Journal_. It fell to the lot of his partner, John L. Stevens, who had been a minister, to write the temperance articles, and he would write them long and strong. It was a custom with Mr. Blaine to go around among the workmen and chat with them, a few words of good cheer. Among them was an Irishman named John Murphy, who loved his glass. He was a witty fellow, and generally had something to say. One day while Mr. Blaine was around, Murphy had a large, long manuscript from Mr. Stevens, on temperance, which he was setting up in type. It was a hard job, and the day was hot. He was about half through, when he called out to the foreman,--

“Owen, have you a quarter?”

“Yes, sir! What do you want of it?”

All were listening, including Mr. Blaine, for they expected something bright and sharp.

“Well, sir, I thought I would have to be after having something to wet me throat wid before I got through with this long, dry temperance job.”

Everybody roared at the Irishman’s quaint sally. It struck Mr. Blaine as particularly dry and ludicrous; he laughed outright, and he would tell it as a good joke on his partner.

Mr. Blaine has never talked about people behind their backs; he is no gossiper. He is a fearless man, and if he has anything to say to a man he says it squarely to his face. There is a purity of tone and richness of life in his home, that are both noticeable and remarkable. There seem to be no frictions, gratings, or harshness. One of ample opportunity has said, “I never heard him speak a cross word to his children.” He is rather indulgent than otherwise. While he may be, as case requires, the strong, central government, they are as sovereign states; no rebellion manifests itself, requiring coercion.

Mr. Blaine’s family have been accustomed to attend church, and the family pew is always full. Father and mother are both members of the Congregational Church, and have the reputation of being devoted Christians and liberal supporters of the church. Mr. Blaine tells them to put down what they want from him, and he will pay it.

He has the reputation of being one of the best Bible-class teachers in the city. His long drill at college, reading the New Testament through in Greek several times, has helped him in this. A Mission Sabbath-school was started down in the lower part of Augusta, and he went down with the others and taught a large Bible-class. His old pastors, Doctor Ecob, of Albany, N. Y., and Doctor Webb, of Boston, Mass., bear the highest testimony to his Christian character and integrity. It was said of him at Cincinnati, that “he needed no certificate of moral character from a Rebel congress,” and a very careful examination proves it true. No man could, it would seem, by any possibility, stand better in his own home community than does Mr. Blaine. It is not simply cold, formal endorsement, as a matter of self-respect and state-pride, but the clear, strong words of a deep and powerful friendship, that one constantly hears who will stand in the light and let it shine on him.

There were in his Green-street home, parlor, sitting-room, dining-room, and kitchen, down-stairs, and corresponding rooms up-stairs. There was quite a large side-yard, with numerous trees, and garden in the rear. The barn and rear part of the house were connected by a long wood-house, as is the custom in New England. It was an ample and respectable place for a young editor and politician to reside, and while it was up on the hill or low bluff from Water Street, down near the Kennebec River, where the business portion of the city was, and his office was located, still it was quite convenient for him.

His old office was burned in the big fire of 1865, which destroyed the business portion of the city, but the desk was saved at which he did much of his writing when in charge of the office of the _Journal_ during the presidential campaign of 1860.

During this campaign there was so much to excite him, so much news to read, so many speeches to make, so many ways to go, and such a general monopoly of time and attention, that very early in the morning they would get out of “copy.” The foreman would say,--and he was a very kind-hearted man, and loved Mr. Blaine,--

“I don’t see any way for you to do, Dan, but to go up to Mr. Blaine’s, and wake him up, and tell him we must have some more copy.”

Up he would go to the Green-street home, and rouse him up. Mr. Blaine would come down in his study-gown and slippers and say,--

“What, that copy given out?”

“Yes, sir, and we will have to have more right away!”

“Well, what did he do, sit right down and dash it off for you?”

“Yes, sometimes, and sometimes he would take the scissors.”

This was said with a mild, significant smile.

Mr. Blaine could write anywhere, and did much of it out in the dining-room on the supper-table, with his family all about him. He would become oblivious of all surroundings, and with his power of penetration and concentration, adapt himself to his work, utterly lost to circumstances.

He had no mercy on meanness. It roused his whole nature. He would walk the floor at home, plan his articles, think out his sentences, and send everything to the printer just as he had written it first,--but when he came to correct the proof he would erase and interline until the article had passed almost beyond the power of recognition. His finishing touches were a new creation.

Of course the poor printers never said anything either solemn or wise at such times, especially when driven to the final point of desperation. But they could not get mad at him, and there was no use trying. Dan said,--

“He would just as soon shake hands with a man dressed up as I am now, with this old suit of overalls on, and sit down and talk with him as with the richest man in town.”

“The men knew this, and saw and felt his power. He looked at the man, and not at the clothes?”

“Yes, that is just it.”

Mr. Blaine’s business and home-life are so blended, it is impossible to separate them. He never left his business at the office. It was all hours and every hour with him, except upon the Sabbath.

He took some time to look after the education of his children, something as his father and grandfather had dealt with him. But Mrs. Blaine, having been a teacher, took this responsibility upon herself. They all attended the public schools of the city, and were early sent away to academy, college, and seminary. The home always had an air of intelligence. Busy scenes with books were common, day and night. Materials for writing, papers, magazines, and books for general reading, and for review, seemed omnipresent. There is order and system amid all the seeming confusion.

Mrs. Blaine’s hand and touch are felt and seen everywhere. She is a large, magnificent woman, a born queen, as fit to rule America as Queen Victoria to rule England. She has a quiet, commanding air, with nothing assumed or affected about her. A gentle, wholesome dignity makes her a stranger to storms, and her clear, strong mind makes her ready and at home in society. She is not a great talker, and encourages it in others by listening only when it is sensible. She is too wise and womanly to ever gush, and never encourages talk about her husband. There is nothing patronizing about her.

The fact is, the presidency, since the death of Mr. Garfield, and the terrible ordeal through which they then passed, has been very serious business to them. They have not labored for it. It has been thrust upon them,--for they are one in every sympathy and every joy.

About a year ago, while calling upon his old friend, Ex-Gov. Anson P. Morrill, Mr. Morrill said,--

“Are you going to try for the presidency again, Blaine? Come, now, tell me, right out. I want to know.”

“No, sir,” was the reply. “I do not want it. If you could offer it to me to-night, I would not accept it. I am devoted to my book at present, and love it, and do not wish to be diverted from it.”

Mr. Morrill went on to say, that “eight years ago, when they tried to nominate him at Cincinnati, I was opposed to it, and told my neighbor, Mr. Stevens, I would not vote for him. I thought he was too young, and had not grown enough.”

“Well, how is it now?”

“O, he is all right now, well-developed, solid, and strong. The nation can’t do better than put him right in. He will make a master president, and give the country an administration they will be proud of.”

This shows the honor and honesty of the old governor, and that he loved the nation above his friend. The happy, blessed, prosperous years of home-life ended on Green Street, when Mr. Blaine was advanced to the third office in the nation, as speaker of the House of Representatives in congress,--and they removed to the larger home, with ampler grounds, on State Street, next to the capitol. Here they have since resided, except when living in Washington. Mr. Blaine loves home, and has his family with him.

There is nothing extravagant about the home on State Street, either in the house or its furnishing. It is plain, simple, and comfortable. The sitting-room and dining-room upon the right of the main hall, and the two parlors on the left are thrown into one, making two large rooms, which have always been serviceable for entertaining company, but never more so than since his nomination for the presidency. The hallway extends into a large, new house, more modern in appearance than the house proper, erected by Mr. Blaine for his library, gymnasium, etc. Mr. Blaine is careful about his exercise, and practises with dumb-bells, takes walks, rides, etc.

He has a large barn for horses, and generally keeps a number of them. The house is of Corinthian architecture, without a trace of Gothic. Corinthian columns, two on each side, indicate the old division of the large room on the left of the hallway into the front and back parlor, but all trace of doors is removed, and they are practically one. A large bay-window, almost a conservatory, built square, in keeping with the house, looks out upon the lawn.

It is, all in all, a very convenient, home-like place, with nothing pretentious or to terrify the most plebeian who would care to enter, and they have been there by the score and hundred. Not less than a thousand friends, neighbors, and visitors were cordially invited to come in and shake hands with General Logan, when he visited Mr. Blaine soon after the convention that nominated them, and received a quiet serenade, declining any public reception.

A bright, important feature of Mr. Blaine’s home is his cousin, “Gail Hamilton,”--Miss Abigail Dodge,--the gifted authoress. She is an intellectual companion, and an important factor in the social and home-life of the family, deeply interested, but with native good grace, in all that pertains to the honor and welfare of her distinguished relatives. Books, music, bric-a-brac, abound in their present home.

They do not “fare sumptuously every day,” though feasts of course there are, but continue in their simple, democratic ways. Eating is not a chief business in that home. The children are very intelligent, and minds, rather than stomachs, have premiums on them. When Walker was a little fellow, long before he could read, less than two years old, he could turn to any picture in a large book; he knew them all. But none of them have surpassed, or equalled, their father’s work at books,--going through those great lives of Plutarch by the time he was nine years old,--and this we hear from Mrs. Blaine herself. Only the three younger are at home,--Margaret, James Gillespie, Jr., and Hattie, who, although she is the baby, wears glasses. She is a wide-awake and pleasant child, and finds so much of life as is now a daily experience, a burden rather than a delight. James has many of his father’s characteristics, it is said. He is a tall, noble, manly fellow, and, though still in his teens, has been tutoring in Washington the past winter. Margaret, older than Hattie or James, has achieved a national reputation by a dexterous use of the telephone at the time of her father’s nomination. She was the first to receive the intelligence. She has mature, womanly ways, and is very like her mother, though the children all resemble their father,--have his strong, marked features,--unless it may be Emmons or Alice.

Alice was the oldest daughter, and would accompany, with perhaps other members of the family, Mrs. Blaine herself, at times, back in the editorial days, upon the press-excursions. Upon those occasions Mr. Blaine was in his glory, full of facts, full of life, and full of stories. There was none of the wag or loafer about him; he was never idle or obsequious; but he knew all about the bright side of things, and never failed to find it. His own life seemed to light up all around him. The ludicrous side was as funny as the mean was despicable. He was very popular among the journalists of the state. He was an honor to the craft, and they felt it, and easily recognized him as a royal good fellow,--a sort of leader or representative man. He was called out when toasts were to be responded to or speeches to be made, and was the captivating man on all occasions. The crowd gathered about him. He never would tell a story but that any lady might listen to it without a blush. They were well selected, and always first-class, and told in the shortest, sharpest manner possible. He would never spin a long yarn. It must be quickly told, and to the point, and have a special fitness for the occasion.

A story that he enjoyed hugely, and could tell with a gusto inimitable, was of a country-man elected to the legislature, and for the first time stopping at a large hotel. The waiters were busy, and while he awaited his turn he observed a dish of red peppers in front; taking one of them on his fork, he put it in his mouth, and began the work of mastication. All eyes were turned on him. The process was a brief one, and he very soon raised his fair-sized hand, and, taking that pepper from his mouth, laid it beside his plate, and said, as he drew in a long breath to cool off his blistered tongue, “You lie thar until you cool!” This was only matched by one regarding a man from the interior, at a hotel-table in St. Louis, who, observing a glass of iced-milk on the outer circle of dishes that surrounded the plate of a gentleman opposite to him, reached for it and swallowed it down. The gentleman watched him closely, and, with some expression of astonishment, said simply,--

“That’s cool!”

“Ya-as,” the fellow blustered out, “of course it is; thar’s ice in it!”

Few toasts touch the heart of Mr. Blaine more deeply than the great toast of the family and of friendship, and one to which he could respond with the happiest grace and the liveliest good cheer, “Here’s to those we love, and those who love us! God bless them!”

Mr. Blaine drinks no liquors, not even the lightest kinds of wine, I am credibly informed by one who was with him on those occasions, and frequently at his table.

Mrs. Blaine, like her husband, is a great reader, and while a devoted mother and faithful wife, never neglecting her home, husband, or her children, has kept herself well informed, and is intelligent and attractive in conversation.

Old friends say, “I do love to hear Mrs. Blaine talk; she has a fine mind, is so well educated, and so well informed.”

An old school-mate testifies that she was a fine scholar when at the academy over the river from her present home, and that she also studied and finished her education at Ipswich.

She has trained her children with a skill that few mothers could command. Her children are her jewels, and are loved with a mother’s affection. They are as stars, while her husband is as the great sun shining in the heaven of her joys.

The present Augusta home has been, for years, little more than a summer-resort, to which they have come the first of June. Their great home has been in Washington. This, for twenty years, has been life’s centre to them. Here home-life has reached its zenith; its glories have shone the brightest; it has been at the nation’s capital, and husband and father among the first men of the nation. Wealth has been at their command, to make that home all they desired. They could fill it with the realizations of their choicest ideals, and friends, almost worshipers, have come and gone with the days and hours, from all parts of the nation. They have lived in the nation’s life. They have been in the onward drift and trend of things, ever on the foremost wave, caught in the onward rush of events. Life has been of the intensest kind, rich in all that enriches, noble in all that ennobles. They have occupied a large place in the nation, and the nation has occupied a large place in them; and yet, though at the very farthest remove from the quiet, simple life of the cottage or the farm, it has been an American home; it could be no other with such a united head, and retains much of the old simplicity. The habits of early life are still on them, and in nothing are they estranged from the people.

It has been an experience with them so long, and came on so early in its beginnings, and gradually, that they have become accustomed to honor and distinction.

Another home is likely to be theirs in Washington, the crown of all the others. But in it they will be the same they are now; just as glad to see their friends, as home-like as themselves, as genuine and true. Their heads cannot be turned if they have not been, and home in the White House will be, if in reserve for them, the same dear, restful, cheerful spot, for the loved ones will be there, and that makes home, not walls, and floor, and furniture.

Photographs of the family abound at Mr. Blaine’s, all except the picture of Mrs. Blaine,--she has not had it taken. “They are not true,” she says, and she brought a half-dozen of her husband, and only one seemed good, and she admitted it. The others showed, I thought, how terrific has been the conflict of life with him. They show him when haggard and worn, and perhaps prove, by her judgment on them, how consummate is her ideal of the man of her heart. Mr. Blaine loves the open air. The hammock, seen in the back-ground of the picture of his house, is soothing and restful to him, and to a man of such incessant activity rest is very welcome. He was out in the hammock, as shown in the picture of his home, with his family and some of his nearest neighbors about him, when the balloting was going on in Chicago. The third ballot had just been taken when his neighbor, Mr. Hewins, came on the grounds.

“Well, Charley,” he said, “you don’t see anybody badly excited about here, do you?”

“Mr. Blaine,” he said, “was the coolest one of the company.”

These lawn-scenes are a part of the home-life, a very large and pleasant part; for there are no pleasanter grounds in Augusta than those surrounding Mr. Blaine’s modest mansion.

XIX.

CHARACTERISTICS OF MR. BLAINE.

In conversation with a leading business man in Maine, the question was asked, “What are the chief characteristics of Mr. Blaine?” The man was well situated to know, and well fitted to comprehend, although he was not the man to analyze character, except in a general way, and largely from a business point of view. His answer was,--

“His immense industry; his great enlightenment, and he has always been a growing man! He has such great force of character, and such large intellectual power, and then he is such a social man. He knows so much, and is so interesting in conversation. He will talk to a peasant so that he will take it all in, and a prince sitting by will enjoy it.”

Captain Lincoln and his wife, New England people, but from the Sandwich Islands, where he had been for some five years in charge of a vessel, called to see him about the middle of June, to pay their congratulations; and it was pleasant to observe, how, without a trace of aristocracy, but with a genuine manliness, he sat down just like a brother, and talked with them of their interests, the Island and ocean affairs, and observed, “They don’t have any more roast missionary out there now”; but this was slipped into a sentence that almost gave a history of the Islands. And as he discussed ocean problems, routes to Mexico, and different parts of America, North and South, the captain’s eyes opened with admiration. And it was not a display of knowledge, but brought out in questions, as to what do you think of such a project, and in stating a few brief reasons for it, the man’s information not only cropped out, but burst forth. He seems so full of it, that when it can find a vent it comes forth in deluge fashion, much as water does from a fire-plug.

Mr. Blaine never could be a specialist, but must be world-wide in his knowledge, as he is in his sympathies. Some men are like ponds in which trout are raised,--small and narrow, serve a single purpose, and serve it well; but he is more like the ocean,--broad, and grand, and manifold in the purposes he serves, and deep as well. Mr. Blaine is not a shallow man. His has not been the skimming surface-life of the swallow, but rather the deep-delving life of reality and substance. Deep-sea soundings, both of men and things, have been a peculiar delight to him.

Curiosity has ever been a secret spring in him. He must know all, and he would hunt, and rummage, and delve, and search, until he did. He has the scent of a greyhound for evidence, however abstract, and he would track it down somehow, “with all the precision of the most deadly science,” as he did the telegram which Proctor Knott suppressed. This inborn faculty, which he has developed to a marvelous degree, has been a mighty weapon of defence to him, when combinations and conspiracies have been formed against him, and of the most cruel character, for his destruction. For, let it not be forgotten, that he has lived through that era of American life when the great effort was to kill off, politically, the great men of the Republican party. A rebel congress of Southern brigadiers did their worst, but the nation applauded as he triumphed.

The same knowledge seems greater power in him than in ordinary men, or than in almost any other man, because of his great intellectual force. Just as a dinner amounts to more in some men, because of greater power of digestion,--just as the smooth stone from the brook when in David’s sling went with greater precision and power, penetrating the forehead of Goliath. It is the man and in his combinations, manner, methods, and the time, and yet all of these have little to do with it. Force and directness seem to express it all. Conventionalities are merely conveniences to Mr. Blaine, and when not such are instantly discarded. Common sense is the pilot of his every voyage. Everything is sacrificed to this. This, and this alone, has been the crowned king of his entire career, and all else merely subjects.