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At about this time Godkin set down Evarts's opinion that "we are witnessing the decline of public morality which usually presages revolution," and reported that Howells was talking "despondently like everybody else about the condition of morals and manners."
He at first looked eagerly, and, when the last number came in which a eulogy could possibly appear, he turned over the pages of The Nation with sorrowful regret, hardly believing his eyes that the article he sought was not there. Now I suspect that the reason of this extraordinary omission was due to the irreconcilable opinions of Walker and Godkin on a question of finance.
It is a notable example of the peculiarity of Godkin, to allow at the portal of death the one point of political policy on which he and Walker disagreed to overweigh the nine points in which they were at one. Most readers of The Nation noticed distinctly that, from 1895 on, its tone became more pessimistic and its criticism was marked by greater acerbity. Mr.
Sometimes such men are true prophets; at other times, while they see clearly certain aspects of a case, their narrowness of vision prevents them from taking in the whole range of possibilities, especially when the enthusiasm of manhood is gone. Godkin took a broader view in 1868, which he forcibly expressed in a letter to the London Daily News.
Presidents, statesmen, senators, congressmen rose and fell; political administrations changed; good, bad, and weak public men passed away; but Godkin preached to us every week a timely and cogent sermon. To return now to my personal experience. I owe wholly to The Nation my conviction in favor of civil service reform; in fact, it was from these columns that I first came to understand the question.
"Once I fancied I saw a face a pale boy-face shining in the bushes. Lord, it gave me a turn!" "Could there be a secret passage?" asked Martin in a low voice. "A fellow named Godkin told me an hour ago that he had his eye on a lame chap and a gawk of a schoolmaster who were always skulking around close to the ground. He says the boy lives hereabouts and knows the woods like a snake."
Who remembers even such great editors as Greeley or James Gordon Bennett or Godkin or Dana? What malignant magic, what black art, is it that reduces us all to one level of forgottenness when we are gone, and even before we are gone? Have those high souls left their inspiration here, for common men to breathe the breath of finer and nobler life from?
Similarly, it is a pertinent question how many journalists and how many public men would stand as well as Godkin in this matter of consistency if we possessed the same abundant records of their activity? The more careful the study of Godkin's utterances, the less will be the irritation felt by men who love and believe in their country.
While the farmer of the Western Reserve and Lowell are extreme types of clientèle, each represents fairly well the peculiar following of Greeley and of Godkin, which differed as much as did the personal traits of the two journalists. Godkin speaks of Greeley's "odd attire, shambling gait, simple, good-natured and hopelessly peaceable face, and long yellow locks."
At one time, when Godkin had been particularly caustic, and the Mugwumps at Harvard were unusually critical, Roosevelt attended a committee meeting at the University. After talking with President Eliot, he went and sat by a professor, and remarked, play fully, "Eliot is really a good fellow at heart. Do you suppose that, if he bit Godkin, it would take?"
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