Nothing can arouse the indignation of your friends, regardless of party,
so much as the thought that while you are working so hard in the
postoffice at Washington with your coat off, collecting box rent and
making up the Western mail, the remorseless engraver and electrotyper are
seeking to down you by making pictures of you in which you appear either
as a dude or a tough.

While I have not the pleasure of being a member of your party, having
belonged to what has been sneeringly alluded to as the g.o.p., I cannot
refrain from expressing my sympathy at this time. Though we may have
differed heretofore upon important questions of political economy, I
cannot exult over these portraits. Others may gloat over these efforts to
injure you, but I do not. I am not much of a gloater, anyhow.

I leave those to gloat who are in the gloat business.

Still, it is one of the drawbacks incident to greatness. We struggle hard
through life that we may win the confidence of our fellow-men, only at
last to have pictures of ourselves printed and distributed where they will
injure us.

[Illustration: ASSORTED PHYSIOGNOMY.]

I desire to add before closing this letter, Mr. Vilas, that with those who
are acquainted with you and know your sterling worth, these portraits will
make no difference. We will not allow them to influence us socially or
politically. What the effect may be upon offensive partisans who are total
strangers to you, I do not know.