Saturday, November 1st. Everywhere the enthusiasm was general. At Omaha the demonstration was unsurpassed. The city gave itself up to a holiday. And so from that point to the General's home at Galena, November 5th, where the reception was an ovation unequalled in fervor. By November 12th, the party were in Chicago, where they were greeted by a formal procession and review. Be it understood that throughout, the General was called upon for speeches, and many of them were strikingly full of apt sentiment, though necessarily brief. At every town of importance there were receptions and ovations, so that never monarch passed through a land amid such spontaneous out-pourings and such unanimity of acclamation.

The route then lay through Indianapolis, Logansport, Louisville, Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburg, Harrisburg, to Philadelphia. At each point the welcome seemed to grow more enthusiastic, the demonstrations more elaborate and hearty. But it remained for Philadelphia, the starting point of the party around the world more than two years and a half before, to eclipse all that had yet been seen in the shape of brilliant reception and gorgeous street pageantry. It was a fitting closing to a notable trip and set the seal on that circuit of travel which enveloped the globe. The time was December 16th, 1879. The time of starting had been May 17th, 1877.

The General was met by the mayor and city officials. The mayor said: "As I bade you God speed upon your journey, I now welcome you home; and trust that in your stay among us you may feel that you are at home, and that the people of Philadelphia, by their hearty greeting, may impress you that it is indeed the City of Brotherly Love."

The General responded in a brief speech of thanks and expression of pleasure at his safe return to a place he always liked to call home. Then began to move one of the longest and grandest processions ever witnessed in any city. Arches with mottoes overhung the streets. Houses were gay with

flags and colors. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets and rent the air with cheers of welcome. The procession represented the civic authorities, political bodies, professions, commercial and mercantile interests, trades, occupations, and every phase of organized labor. It really never ended, for night came on before it was possible for its rearward sections to complete the route, and they filed away by other streets. In the evening the city was illuminated and old Independence Hall, by the aid of calcium lights, was resplendent in a glory never before seen.

His stay in the city was a round of receptions, dinners, toasts and speech-making, first at Carpenters Hall, the Nation's Birthplace, then Independence Hall, then as a guest of the city, then the Grand Army Post No. 1, of which he was a member, then the combined Posts at the Academy of Music, then by the Commercial Exchange, then by the Public Schools, then by the Union League on December 23d, which closed a week, during which the city gave itself over almost entirely to welcome ceremonies of a kind unparalleled in its history and which the presence of no other American citizen could have evoked.

The "Tour Around the World" thus happily ended. It was not a journey, but a triumphal march by one who typed a great nation both in its martial forces and peaceful prowess. He entered principalities and stood before thrones, threaded dynasties and mingled freely with civilizations, not more because of unsurpassed individual exploit and exceptional public and private worth, not more because he was to us great and noble and good, than because he was a true exponent of American character and institutions, whose fame had fortunately preceded him and given him a sesame to every heart and every affection from purpled king to humble laborer. He honored his nation more than he was honored, and memory of him will be as sweet seed sown for a harvest of comity, peace and love among all people.

BEKORI

CHAPTER XXV.

1880.

FORE the end of President Grant's second term, his name mentioned by some of his admirers in connection with a candidacy for a third term. Although there was nothing to prohibit this in the Constitution, nor in any law, it was deemed sufficiently contrary to established custom to awaken hostility to Grant, which, in the heat of narrow partisanship, took a personal turn. In order to crush the thought in its infancy-ambition for a third term he had not-the word "Cæsarism" was invented, and he was pictured in the opposing party journals as one desirous of perpetuating his political ascendancy indefinitely. Had this unjust imputation been confined to political opponents exclusively, it would have attracted but little attention. But it unfortunately found encouragement among some of the more ambitious, or less scrupulous, men and papers of his own party, and was wrought up till it became quite a sentiment.

It had never been his custom to reply to attack. His works were his vindication. And as to preferment of any kind, no man could say that he had ever solicited position in his life, ever held one except in obedience to a most pronounced public will, or ever done aught while in one that even savored of disregard of law or popular sentiment. While this should have been sufficient answer at the time to every imputation, he departed from his customary silence sufficiently long to set himself straight before the country in a letter, in which he said:

"Now for the third term. I do not want it any more than I

did the first. I would not write or utter a word to change the will of the people in expressing and having their choice. The question of the number of terms allowed to any one executive can only come up fairly in the shape of a proposition to amend the Constitution-a shape in which all political parties can participate, fixing the length of time or the number of terms for which any one person shall be eligible for the office of President. Until such an amendment is adopted, the people cannot be restricted in their choice by resolution further than they are now restricted as to age, nativity, etc.

"It may happen in the future history of the country, that to change an executive because he has been eight years in office, will prove unfortunate, if not disastrous. The idea that any man could elect himself President, or even renominate himself, is preposterous. It is a reflection upon the intelligence and patriotism of the people to suppose such a thing possible. Any man can destroy his chances for the office, but no man can force an election, or even a nomination. To recapitulate: I am not, nor have I ever been, a candidate for a renomination. I would not accept a nomination, if it were tendered, unless it should come under such circumstances as to make it an imperative duty-circumstances not likely to arise."

The man who bore unmurmuringly and silently—except as his voice opened in the above letter-all the charges of a desire to perpetuate his power, withdrew from public life at the end of his term of office in the most quiet and unostentatious manner; not with a sigh of regret, as one having ambition, but glad of an opportunity to re-enter private station and his own. modest home circle. Thus he returned to the bosom of the people, after serving their will in the highest capacities vouchsafed to man, and went seeking nothing, desiring nothing, so much as the privileges of a retirement that could only be disturbed by a call as loud and imperative as that which made