Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/314

288 enough in public positions to become sensible of their worthlessness as an element of human happiness and especially since my recent bereavement I have absolutely no ambition in that line. Being so minded and having no friends to push forward nor enemies to punish, I feel that I can afford to speak to you about everything connected with our common cause without reserve and in perfect confidence. The only thing that I want is to promote certain objects of public importance and to that end to preserve, as a private citizen, my influence on public opinion and the esteem of those whose respect is worth something. I can do that only by telling the people what I honestly believe to be true and what I can reasonably prove to be true. What I believe as to the consequences of your election, especially with regard to the work of reform, I have stated in my letter to Mr. Ottendorfer, and I shall repeat it in every speech. It is a draft on the future, and it is in the interest of our common cause as well as your own as a candidate, that this draft be as well endorsed as possible. The strongest endorsement is your own.

I have not been well of late but am now in a condition to go into the campaign. I have given up the idea of opening in New York. It is just now a bad time for public meetings there, a large number of people being out of town and public assemblages in closed halls not being very comfortable in this warm weather. Moreover, the main speech I wish to deliver is not yet in that shape in which I want to have it. Perhaps I shall divide it into two, one on the reform question and the other on the currency. In a day or two I shall appoint a day for a meeting of the Germans in Cleveland, and then I may go for the same purpose to Chicago and Milwaukee, to return immediately to Ohio. I shall write to Mr. Wikoff about it. After Ohio I may go into Indiana. In New York, the