Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 21.djvu/636

628 Communion in spirit! Forgive me,

But I, who am earthy and weak,

Would give all my incomes from dreamland

For her rose-leaf palm on my cheek! That little shoe in the corner,

So worn and wrinkled and brown,

Its motionless hollow confutes you

And argues your wisdom down.

E shall not claim greater honor than prophets commonly receive in their own country when the vote of the nation confirms the impression we feel that General Grant is to be the next President, though there are some things which make us aware of risk in the prediction. It is not long since General Grant was formally named for the Presidency by a class of persons in several of our large cities who conceived themselves singularly qualified to choose the head of a free people, because they had hitherto had little or nothing to do with politics, and were, as a class, less self-governed than any other part of our population. They proposed to take politics out of the hands of politicians, and to elect a President by the force of wealth and respectability; and, besides the dangerous favor of these down-trodden and quite helpless merchant-princes, General Grant has had the disadvantage of a literary father celebrating his boyhood in the "New York Ledger." But, on the other hand, there are Vicksburg and Richmond, and the great fact that General Grant has said nothing to injure himself, however mischievous his friendships and relationships may be. We take courage from what he has done and has not done, and find his surviving popularity an assurance of his success, at least before the Republican Convention appointed for an early day at Chicago.

It seems quite possible now that no one will appear there to dispute the nomination with him. The question has, up to this time, been solely between him and Chief Justice Chase; no other has had the slightest reason to hope for the nomination; and now the Chief Justice's influence with the party throughout the country seems fairly and finally tested by the action of the party in his own State, where there is scarcely a doubt that its whole strength will be given for Grant.

What manner of man this is who is to be our next President is plain enough. As we all know, he has of his own motion said little about it, yet he has done a vast deal about it; and, though a silent man, he has shown himself a very frank one. If we sketched him according to the popular ideal of a year ago (for the most part evolved, as we think, from the inner consciousness of the reporters arid correspondents), he would appear as a smallish military gentleman, not too scrupulous in dress, who is in the pretty constant receipt of calls from eminent politicians anxious to sound him upon this and upon that, and who baffles all these wily intriguers by smoking speechlessly, with a scarcely perceptible quivering of the left eyelid, or else, with an impenetrable astuteness,