In the autumn of the same year we paused to close the chapters of Jerry McCauley’s life, a man who had risen from the depths of crime and sin—­a different sort of man from Bishop Simpson.  He was born in the home of a counterfeiter.  He became a thief, an outlaw.  By an influence that many consider obsolete and old-fashioned, he became converted, and was recognised by the best men and women in New York and Brooklyn.  I knew McCauley.  I stood with him on the steps of his mission in Water Street.  He was a river thief changed into an angel.  It was supernatural, a miracle.  McCauley gave twelve years to his mission work.  Two years before his death he changed his quarters, converting a dive into a House of God.  What an imbecile city government refused to touch was surrendered to hosannas and doxologies.  The story of Jerry McCauley’s missionary work in the heart of a wicked section of New York was called romantic.  I attest that I am just as keenly sensitive to the beauty of romance as any human being, but there was a great deal that was called romantic in American life in 1884-1885 that was not so.  Romance became a roseate mist, through which old and young saw the obligations of life but dimly.

A strange romance of marriage became epidemic in America at this time.  European ethics were being imported, and the romance of European liberty swept over us.  A parental despotism was responsible.  The newspapers of the summer of 1884 were full of elopements.  They were long exciting chapters of domestic calamity.  My sympathies were with the young fellow of seven hundred dollars income, married to a millionaire fool who continually informed him how much better her position was before she left home; the honeymoon a bliss of six months, and all the rest of his life a profound wish that he had never been born; his only redress the divorce court or the almshouse.  The poetry of these elopements was false, the prose that came after was the truth.  Marriage is an old-fashioned business, and that wedding procession lasts longest that starts not down the ladder out of the back window, but from the front door with a benediction.

But, morally and politically, we were in a riot of opinion against which I constantly protested.  Politically, we were without morals.

The opposing Presidential candidates in 1884 were Grover Cleveland and James G. Blaine.  It was the wonder of the world that the American people did not make Mr. Blaine President.  There was a world-wide amazement also at the abuse which preceded Mr. Cleveland’s election.  The whole thing was a spectacle of the ignorance of men about great men.  All sorts of defamatory reports were spread abroad about them.  Men of mind are also men of temperament.  There are two men in every one man, and for this reason Mr. Blaine was the most misunderstood of great men.  To the end of his brilliant life calumny pursued him.  There were all sorts of reports about him.

One series of reports said that Mr. Blaine was almost unable to walk; that he was too sick to be seen; that death was for him close at hand, and his obituaries were in type in many of the printing offices.