was clear and memory unimpaired. He dictated with facility for sometimes two and three hours a day, and frequently gave an hour or two to the arrangement of his data. He kept up his terse, perspicuous and direct style, and seldom amended what had been committed to paper. But while this work was permitted by his physicians as a relaxation, disease was not relinquishing its hold, and it was only a question of time as to when it would reassert itself and again prostrate its victim.

The time came with the approach of warm weather. The heat of early June conspired with the disease to undo all that had been gained. Literary work became irksome, fatiguing and dangerous. Appetite failed. Cheerfulness departed. Strength flagged. Weakness, profuse secretion, difficult expectoration, gradually hardening nodules in the neck, almost a total loss of voice, increasing pain, prostration and rapid wasting-all these told a sad story, and admonished doctors and friends that if the patient were to survive the summer or even avoid speedy collapse there must be instant departure for a place where the temperature was lower and the air purer. Delay of even a week might make removal dangerous, if not impossible. Mr. Drexel's cottage on Mt. McGregor, in the northern part of New York State, was selected, and hither the General was moved on June 16th, 1885.

He stood the trip very well considering his weakness and the heat. The immediate effects of the change were not assuring. Dr. Douglas remained in charge. After a rest of a day or two the General tested his strength by a walk in company with his faithful servant Harrison up the steep road to the highest point of the mountain, some three hundred feet away. He reached his cottage thoroughly exhausted, and was for a time despondent over the result of the trip. His condition was his own measure of what he had lost in strength and vitality. He called for paper and wrote some family memoranda, in which he confessed that he found himself losing

ground again. His voice seemed permanently gone. Yet, said the doctor, "He is as well as any man can be who has such a deadly enemy grasping at his throat. He is steadily following the course marked out for the disease. It is constantly depressing and gradually wearing away the vital powers. His tendency is to grow weaker and weaker every day. To-morrow he will not be as strong as he is to-day, for the disease will have progressed some. Our hope of benefit from this change is to prolong his life."

By June 19th, he had begun to experience some benefit from the cooler, fresher air of the mountain. He got to sleeping, grew more cheerful, and suffered less pain. He found enjoyment with his family on the piazzas, and took great interest in the play of his grandchildren about the cottage. His fondness for children was always a marked characteristic. Hundreds of letters came to him from children from all over the land expressing hope that he might recover, and the perusal of these was always a source of comfort.

Though he could not converse except by making his thoughts and wishes known on paper, he began to turn his attention to his book again, and often devoted as much as an hour or two a day to its revision. On the 23d of June, he announced that he had about completed it, and should not have it on his mind. any more. But even this light work had grown taxing, and was followed by painful reaction. His weight had been reduced ten pounds in two weeks-from one hundred and forty to one hundred and thirty pounds.

On June 24th, the doctors had a consultation, and announced that there had been no marked change in the disease, but that his system was in a better general condition than when he left New York. On the 29th, his quietude and disinclination to leave his room alarmed the doctor and the family. In answer to their fears he wrote, "Do as I do; I take it quietly. I give myself not the least concern. If I knew that the end was to

be to-morrow, I would try and get rest in the meantime. As long as there is no progress of the disease there's hope." On the 30th, Dr. Douglas said:

gressed in the natural way. As I have said before, his condition is one of increasing debility. The General was likely to die at any time in New York, and had he remained there instead of coming here he would in all human probability have expired before this. His present weakness is the natural result of the disease. He is each day less strong, and though the step from day to day is scarcely perceptible, the aggregate of fourteen days becomes noticeable.

"Two weeks ago General Grant left the city, and if he was in New York to-day he could not be moved here. His strength to-day is not equal to such a journey. Now, if you ask me when the end will proably be, I cannot tell. No one can tell. He grows weaker and weaker, and at last the point of exhaustion will be reached. That is all, and nobody can say when that shall be."

The General had by this time thoroughly studied his own condition, and there was no longer any need for the doctors to conceal their opinions. So when the above results of a two weeks' sojourn were made known to him, he replied by handing Dr. Douglas the following note:

"The atmosphere here enables me to live in comparative comfort while I am being treated or while nature is taking its course with my disease. I have no idea that I should have been able to come here now if I remained in the city. It is doubtful, indeed, whether I would have been alive. Now I would be much better able to move back than to come at the time I did. U. S. GRANT, June 30th, 1885."

All the while his quiet mountain home was the centre of incidents calculated to cheer and inspire. Letters flowed in from all parts of the country containing sentiments of affection and prayers for his recovery. Some of them were very touching indeed, such, for instance, as this from Rockbridge Baths, Va.