was charmed by his lovable nature, his gentlemanly bearing, and his conscientious devotion to his public duties.

The most serious criticism passed upon his acts as President was on account of his conduct and policy after the close of the Spanish War. While he opposed that war up to the last moment, he most strongly favored appropriating for his country the full results of the victory. Secretary Hay told me that he cabled the President from London, before sailing to enter on his duties as Secretary of State, not to hold any part of the Philippines except what was necessary for a naval station, and that such would have been the action of the Peace Commissioners at Paris but for the President's express instructions.

In this connection he narrated to me an interesting incident illustrating how far President McKinley had gone in his views as to the territorial expansion of our country. The Secretary was discussing with him the policy of the United States toward China, which he afterwards announced and which gained him greater reputation and honor than any other act of his administration of the Department of State. When he stated to the President that we did not want any of the territory of China, and that, in pleading for the autonomy of that empire, we could well say so to the Great Powers, McKinley replied: "I don't know about that. May we not want a slice, if it is to be divided?"

I make no reference to my service under President Roosevelt, as these memoirs are written while he is still in office, and a relation of personal intercourse might be regarded as untimely.

In my account of the European monarchs whose acquaintance I have made, severe comments have been passed upon the immoral lives led by some of them. More might have been written on the subject. It speaks well for the tone of public sentiment in our country to state that such conduct would not have been tolerated in any American President. It is

gratifying to note that all the Presidents considered in this chapter were men of high character and pure lives. And if the Presidents of the United States from the foundation of the Government are contrasted with the European monarchs of the same period, in both intellectual and moral character, the comparison will be highly favorable to our country.

CHAPTER XL

THE SECRETARIES OF STATE

THE Secretary of State with whom I was first brought into personal relations was Hamilton Fish. I had seen Mr. Seward in the Senate during my first visit to Washington in 1855, but he attracted my attention and interest then as the champion of the anti-slavery cause. I closely observed his career as Secretary of State during and after the Civil War, and have had frequent occasion since then to study his diplomatic state papers. Judged by his achievements and his dispatches, he must be regarded as the first Secretary during the last half-century.

At the time of my first appointment to the Diplomatic Service, the Department of State was located in a rented house on upper Fourteenth Street, the public building erected for it being occupied soon afterwards. It was in this building that I first met Secretary Fish in 1873, when I went to qualify as Minister to Mexico. I found him a most urbane and genial gentleman, who at once put me at ease and smoothed my entrance into diplomatic life. I was twice again in Washington during his incumbency, and came to know him quite intimately and to enjoy the hospitality which Mrs. Fish so graciously dispensed. I have reason to know that Mr. Fish took a personal pride in my career. Years after he had retired from office, in a gathering of prominent men when I last met him near the close of his life, he introduced me with some complimentary remarks and, with evident satisfaction, said, "Mr. Foster is one of my men."

Mr. Fish came to his high office quite unexpectedly. He had voluntarily retired from the Senate after a full term, and

had been sixteen years in private life. At the age of sixty he had no desire to again assume public duties. Upon his confirmation he wrote Senator Sumner: "Very much against my own wishes and after a very positive refusal, I am going to Washington to undertake duties for which I have little taste and less fitness." And yet he had more fitness for the position than many of his predecessors. He came of one of the patrician families of New York; was bred to the law; had been Governor of his State and United States Senator; had traveled in Europe and was familiar with the French language; was possessed of a private fortune; and was a cultivated man of society.

The sequel proved that his misgivings were not well founded, as he was the most useful and successful member of President Grant's Cabinet. His most important work was the negotiation of the Treaty of Washington of 1871, whereby we settled with Great Britain the irritating questions growing out of the Civil War. It was not only the most comprehensive treaty in the number of subjects embraced that was ever negotiated by a Secretary of State, but next to the treaty of peace and independence it was the most important. While it was the result of the labors of a joint high commission, it was conspicuously his work so far as such a convention may be attributed to any one man. While not ambitious, he was fully conscious of the importance of the work he had in hand. Some time before the Commission was agreed upon, he wrote to a friend: "I would esteem it the greatest glory, and the greatest happiness of my life, if it could be settled while I remain in official position; and I should esteem it the greatest benefit to my country to bring it to an early settlement."

Mr. Fish was not a brilliant man, nor was he a genius, but he possessed in an eminent degree those qualities which make the most useful public servants- prudence, intelligence, industry, mastery of the subject in hand, and a conscientious sense of duty. I have been familiar with the work of the De

partment from his day to the present, and I regard him as the most methodical and painstaking Secretary of my acquaintance, the one who dispatched the business of the Department with most promptness and system. Attention to my dispatches was never unreasonably delayed, and they were often accompanied by personal explanatory letters from the Secretary.

Senator Hoar relates an incident which illustrates the influence Secretary Fish exerted over President Grant and his strict sense of duty. A brilliant and able officer who had served on General Grant's staff was appointed by him Consul at Canton, China, where he died after a lingering illness. Senator Hoar asked the President to appoint his widow to the vacant post, on account of the officer's services during the Civil War and because she had during his illness discharged a great part of his duties very well and to the satisfaction of the merchants doing business there. President Grant, after hearing the story, said he would make the appointment - to use his own phrase—if Fish would let him. But Mr. Fish was inexorable. He thought it would be a very undignified proceeding. He also urged that a consul in China had to hold court for the trial sometimes of grave offenses, committed often by very bad characters, and that it was out of the question that a delicate lady should be expected to know or to have anything to do with them. So the proposal fell through.

The successor of Mr. Fish, William M. Evarts, was a man of different temperament and habits. A brilliant lawyer, an orator of a high order, and a vigorous writer, he was without method in his office and left the routine business of the Department to his subordinates. I met Secretary Evarts for the first time in the second year of President Hayes's term, when I was summoned to Washington in 1878 to give information of the state of affairs to a Congressional Committee investigating the Texan border troubles and the disturbed relations