Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/519

Rh that to many of your friends they have been a painful surprise.

You say that originally you had been willing to do all you “could in a proper way to secure Mr. Nicoll's nomination”—thus admitting the propriety of it. Why, then, did you not do it? Because, some time in September last, Mr. Nicoll had told you that “he preferred to resume his private practice of the law.” My dear Mr. Hewitt, you and I are no novices in public life. When you tell me that such a casual remark about preferring private station must be taken as a conclusive reason against bringing that man forward for office, if he is otherwise fit and desirable, you will certainly not expect me to receive that statement without a smile. Have we not both heard it said many a time that not the man should seek the office, but the office the man? Do we not both remember many instances when public men were urged and finally prevailed upon to take office, much against their original desire? A prominent case of that kind is fresh in my memory; it is that of the Hon. Abram S. Hewitt, when, after repeated declarations that he did not desire that office, he permitted himself to be nominated for the mayoralty. But you give up your argument in your own letter; for you say that Mr. Fellows wished to retire to his private practice just as much as Mr. Nicoll, but that “he was solicited to accept a nomination, which he neither expected nor desired.” So it appears that the wish to retire to private practice was conclusive against Mr. Nicoll, but not against Mr. Fellows, and that, in spite of such wish, the nomination could be urged upon Mr. Fellows, but not upon Mr. Nicoll. You must, therefore, pardon sensible men if they do not take your argument as serious.

But you give another reason. “In this condition of affairs,” you say, “the nomination of Mr. Nicoll was