Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/123

 CONKLING

��hour is a candidate who can carry the doubtful States, North and South; and, believing that he more surely than any other can carry New York against any opponent, and carry not only the North, but several States of the South, New York is for Ulysses Grant. lie alone of living Re- publicans has carried New York as a presidential candidate. Once he carried it even according to a Democratic count, and twice he carried it by the people's vote, and he is stronger now. The Republican party with its standard in his hand is stronger now than in 1868 or 1872. Never defeated in war or in peace, his name is the most illustrious borne by any living man; his services attest his greatness, and the country knows them by heart. His fame was born not alone of things written and said, but of the ardu- ous greatness of things done; and dangers and emergencies will search in vain in the future, as they have searched in vain in the past, for any other on whom the nation leans with such confidence and trust. Standing on the highest eminence of human distinction, and having filled all lands with his renown; modest, firm, simple, self -poised; he has seen not only the titled but the poor and the lowly in the utmost ends of the world rise and uncover before him. He has studied the needs and defects of many systems. of government, and he comes back a better American than ever, with a wealth of knowl- edge and experience added to the hard common sense which so conspicuously distin^ished him

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