Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/331

Rh did not recognize each other. In the year 1887, in consequence of a paragraph in the New York Sun in which my name was mentioned, not unkindly, I wrote a brief note to Mr. Dana. Without delay I received from him a long and almost affectionate letter, in which he urged me to let him know when I was in New York, that he might call upon me, and talk over some things old, and some things new.

I called upon him in New York at his office, where we had a pleasant chat of an hour. His office was plain, without carpets, the floor was worn rough, rather than smooth, and the appearance of the rooms was a striking contrast to the editorial rooms of prosperous journalists generally.

My experience at Cairo gave me a poor opinion of Fremont’s qualities as a business man, but in the early part of his career he had exhibited capacity of a high order as a bold and successful explorer of the then unknown regions of the Rocky Mountains. He had also exhibited genius as a soldier, which led to high expectations which were not realized when he came to important commands in the Civil War. My studied opinion of General Fremont is contained in an article that I prepared for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, of which society he was an honorary member:

It is a singular circumstance in the career of John C. Fremont that his important services as an explorer and his contributions to science were brought to a close when he was scarcely more than thirty-four years of age. He was born in the State of Georgia in the year 1813, and from the year 1842 to the year 1846 inclusive, he undertook and carried to a successful result three expeditions from the Mississippi River across the plains, and finally over both chains of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Mr. Jefferson, dur-