Following the defeat of Mr. Cleveland in 1888, the return of the Republican Party to power brought Mr. Blaine a second time to the Department of State. The only other instance in which the office has been held a second time by the same person was that of Daniel Webster. Like the latter, he had been disappointed in his ambition to be President, and when he entered the Department in 1889, I think he had dismissed that ambition.

Mrs. Blaine's "Letters" have made more clear to the public the fact that he left the Department of State with regret, and cherished the desire to return. A few months after President Arthur accepted his resignation and on the day of the execution of the assassin Guiteau, Mrs. Blaine wrote: "Oh, if he only could have died one little year earlier, the difference to me! Your father said the other day, as we drove by the State Department, 'Here I fully expected to raise my Ebenezer for eight years."" Shortly before the Presidential Convention of 1884, in a letter to one of her daughters, she said: "Your father is as little a candidate as though he had succeeded in '76 and '80. The one thing he perhaps does desire is to be once more Secretary of State, and . . . this may possibly be in store for him."

I was present at the National Convention in 1884 when he received the nomination. Although I had been long his personal friend, I doubted the policy of that act, and thought that President Arthur had earned the honor. An incident of the occasion illustrates how little the most experienced public men can foresee the future. I was sitting on the Convention platform beside Carl Schurz, former General, Senator, and member of the Hayes Cabinet, with whom I had an acquaintance dating back to the campaign of 1860. When the nomination of Mr. Blaine was announced, Mr. Schurz, taking out his watch, said: "It is now-[giving the minute and the hour of the day]. From this hour dates the death of the Republican Party." This ill-omened prophet lived to see repeated and

overwhelming triumphs of the party from which he at that hour separated.

Mr. Blaine's management of our foreign relations was in many respects a success and added to his fame. Possessed of such brilliant qualities and such restless energy, his conduct of affairs could not be otherwise than noteworthy. The matters which most distinguished his term were his presidency of the first Pan-American Conference, his correspondence with Lord Salisbury on the Bering Sea Question, and his advocacy of reciprocity. The acts for which he was most criticised were the commission sent to intervene in the ChilePeru War, to which I have already alluded; his unsolicited offer of mediation between Mexico and Guatemala on their boundary dispute; and his attitude on the killing of General Barrundia.

In my relations with the Department of State during his incumbency, I had a difficult part to act in preserving the confidence and esteem of both President Harrison and himself, especially when the tension between them became more and more acute. Mr. Blaine was very partial to his friends, nor was he of a suspicious nature, and during his entire term and up to his death I maintained with him the most friendly and cordial relations. When I was nominated as his successor by President Harrison, he was among the first to send his congratulations. Although at the time plunged in deep grief over the sudden death of his son Emmons, he followed his telegraphic message with this letter: —

MY DEAR MR. FOSTER,

BAR HARBOR, July 6, '92.

I ought sooner to have written you a word of congratulation on your appointment as Secretary of State, which I most heartily do now. I was very glad you were appointed. You will be able to do better service than any man new to the Department.

I thank you for your words of sympathy and condolence in our great affliction. How great it is I hope you may never know.

Very truly and cordially

Your friend,

JAMES G. BLAINE.

Mr. Blaine had a kindly heart and was easily touched by the simple attentions of his friends. When the Bering Sea Case for the United States was completed, it constituted four volumes, including the maps. I had a number of these handsomely bound for the President, the Secretary of State, the British Minister, and other dignitaries. On the copy for the Secretary of State I had placed the name of James G. Blaine and the title in gilt letters. As he had signed the treaty creating the arbitration and the case had been largely prepared while he was still Secretary, I felt that he was entitled to that copy. In acknowledging its receipt, he wrote me as follows with his own hand:

MY DEAR MR. FOSTER,

Oct. 9th, 1892.

Your transmission of the Bering Sea Case, or rather the "Fur Seal Arbitration," was very kind and considerate. Your keeping my name on the title-page as Secretary of State was an act of courtesy which I shall not soon forget. Few men, situated as you are, would have done so.

me

I beg you will accept my sincere thanks for it, and believe Your friend sincerely,

HON. JOHN W. FOSTER, Secretary of State.

JAMES G. BLAINE.

In view of the fact that when Mr. Blaine resigned from the Department, it was reported by certain newspapers that I had had a disagreement with him, I feel that I commit no indiscretion in giving the following letter from Mrs. Blaine,