Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/174

 political opponent whose arguments cannot easily be answered, has always been to throw suspicion upon his motives. If it may be taken as a compliment to the strength of one's reasoning to be attacked in that way, I should be satisfied with the honors that have been showered upon me. For I had not been publicly active more than two or three years, when I could count upon it that, whenever I had made a speech that attracted some attention, a cry would surely arise from the opposite side accusing me of being in the field for money, and that I served only as a hired and paid attorney. And this cry followed me with a persistence truly remarkable. I do not know of any other public speaker being so constantly pestered in the same way. And the worst of it was that, as sad experience proved to me, a good many respectable and well disposed people believed that there was some truth in it. Even as late as 1896, when I made a speech at Chicago in behalf of sound money which was considered quite effective, it was said in opposition newspapers that I had received $10,000 for it; and some persons on my side, instead of repelling the slander, rather confirmed it by replying only that it was all right, “because my speech was worth so much and more.” This went so far that, in some cases, money in considerable sums was offered to me as an inducement to enter the field when it was thought that I was reluctant to do so. One of these cases I may have occasion to mention particularly later on.

I must confess that this charge, coming forth again and again unremittingly, touched me more keenly than the absurd story of my being a Prussian spy had done, and on two occasions I replied to it—once when it appeared even in the Senate, and once when it was elaborated with peculiar acrimony in a prominent newspaper by no less a writer than Gail Hamilton, a relative and strenuous champion of Mr. Blaine. I replied,