Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/130

Rh These two great friends, great military geniuses, who were so true to each other and so free from any jealousy that they could write two such letters to each other as those of March 4, 1864, from Grant to Sherman, dated Nashville, Tennessee, and answered by Sherman March 10, 1864 (every school-boy should learn them by heart); these two great men, of all our heroes — one a President, the other a lieutenant-general — seem to have escaped that almost universal concomitant of greatness, ingratitude and lack of constancy on the part of the fickle public.

General Grant's tour around the world made him so replete with delightful reminiscence that he talked more when he came home. I remember dining with him at Governor Cornell's in New York, and it was a very distinguished dinner. I told him that an English officer who had been present at the dinner given him by the Duke of Wellington in the Waterloo Chamber told me in London that he thought him a very learned soldier. "Well, I am not," said Grant. "I had neither the genius of Sherman nor the learning of Lee or Macpherson. I only meant to get there."

But the fountain of talk was unsealed on this occasion, and he told me of his travels in China and Japan, of the wonderful men he had met everywhere, and the dinner with the Queen, of which he said, "I did not sit next to her, as I expected to; she had a prince and a princess between us, but she was very agreeable, and talked across. Better than all," said he, "I had Fred with me everywhere." The affectionate tone of this delightful character, the simplicity mingled with greatness, made General Grant the idol of the people. His entrance into a city made a gala day. "Celebrity is the chastisement of talent and the punishment of genius." I think he never liked it.