administration against which I squandered a ballot last fall. Neither do I
desire to convey the impression that I would like to open a correspondence
with you for the purpose of killing time. If you ever feel like sitting
down and answering this letter in an off-hand way it would please me very
much, but do not put yourself out to do so. I wanted to ask you, however,
how you like the pictures of yourself recently published by the patent
insides. That was my principal object in writing. Having seen you before
this great calamity befell you, I wanted to inquire whether you had really
changed so much. As I remember your face, it was rather unusually
intellectual and attractive for a great man. Great men are very rarely
pretty. I guess that, aside from yourself, myself, and Mr. Evarts, there
is hardly an eminent man in the country who would be considered handsome.
But the engraver has done you a great injustice, or else you have sadly
changed since I saw you. It hardly seems possible that your nose has
drifted around to leeward and swelled up at the end, as the engraver would
have us believe. I do not believe that in a few short months the look of
firmness and conscious rectitude that I noticed could have changed to that
of indecision and vacuity which we see in some of your late portraits as
printed.

[Illustration: A NOSE ON THE BIAS.]

I saw one yesterday, with your name attached to it, and it made my heart
ache for your family. As a resident in your State I felt humiliated. Two
of Wisconsin's ablest men have been thus slaughtered by the rude broad-axe
of the engraver. Last fall, Senator Spooner, who is also a man with a
first-class head and face, was libeled in this same reckless way. It makes
me mad, and in that way impairs my usefulness. I am not a good citizen,
husband or father when I am mad. I am a perfect simoom of wrath at such
times, and I am not responsible for what I do.