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Down below, slightly to his rear, there flashed through the fog a short series of vari-colored lights, which to Blaine's active mind spelled forth: "Boches 'bout to get me. Big drive on hand. Yonder they go watch out!" That was all, but it was enough. Blaine knew that it must come from another of the raiding scouts who had somehow gone down in No-Man's-Land. It might come from a shell hole.
In April, 1869, a bill favorable to the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad an Arkansas land-grant enterprise was before the House of Representatives. Blaine was Speaker. As the session was near its close and the bill seemed likely to be lost, its friends bespoke Blaine's assistance.
Blaine's wonderful magnetism, the impression he made upon every one, and his tactful flattery of local pride, did a great deal to remove the prejudices against him, which were being fomented by a propaganda of a "mugwump" committee in New York. This propaganda, as is usually the case, assailed his personal integrity.
Neither the judge nor any other person present believed that Mr. Blaine's opinion in this matter was well founded. An important part of my business during this visit was to confer with the proper persons at Washington, including the German ambassador, Baron von Thielmann, regarding sundry troublesome questions between the United States and Germany.
Blaine himself, however, lost office before new results could be obtained; and Frelinghuysen recalled Trescot and abandoned the attempt to force peace. A second object of Blaine's policy was to prevent disputes between Latin American and European powers from becoming dangerous by acting as mediator between them.
Blaine's memory enabled him to rejoin by reminding the distinguished member from Virginia of some egregious blunder committed by Mr. Tucker when filling the Attorney-Generalship of the Old Dominion, and he concluded by saying that if the commission of such a mistake was the result of being a lawyer, he, at least, congratulated himself on not belonging to the legal fraternity. Mr.
So swift were their movements that one might hardly see what results were being obtained; but from the yells, shrieks, explosions and clouds of debris below, it was evident that the destruction was great. Lower and lower still they flew. Blaine's control was perfect. So was that of his subordinates.
He closed by naming his candidate somewhat like this: "I now have the pleasure and honor of proposing as the candidate of this convention that eminent statesman, James S. Blaine." Nearly every one in the convention knew that Mr. Blaine's middle name was Gillespie.
In 1899 President McKinley revived Blaine's project and proposed a Pan-American congress. To popularize this idea, a Pan-American Exposition was arranged at Buffalo in 1901. Here, just after he had expounded his views of the ties that might bind the continents together, McKinley was assassinated.
Again, Blaine's "Twenty Years of Congress," a work which, properly weighed, is not without historical value, is only to be read with great care on account of his hasty and inaccurate generalizations. There are evidences of good, honest labor in those two volumes, much of which must have been done by himself.
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