did not perhaps exactly commit them to memory, he, nevertheless, in the process of preparing them, so completely possessed himself of them that he poured forth his polished sentences without a flaw.
His speech on Free Trade, delivered in the House of Representatives, February 18, 1881, remains the classic on that subject, ranking with Henry Clay's speech on "The American System," delivered in the Senate in 1832. In that address Frank Hurd began with the phrase, "The tariff is a tax," which acquired much currency years after when Grover Cleveland used it.
Everyone, or nearly everyone, told me of course that Frank Hurd was wrong, if he was not, indeed, wicked, and the subject possessed a kind of fascination for me. In thinking of it, or in trying to think of it, I only perplexed myself more deeply, until at last I reached the formidable, the momentous decision of taking my perplexities to Frank Hurd himself, and of laying them before him.
I was by this time a youth of eighteen, and in the summer when he had come home from Washington I somehow found courage enough to go to the hotel where he lived, and to inquire for him. He was there in the lobby, standing by the cigar-stand, talking to some men, and I hung on the outskirts of the little group until it broke up, and then the fear I had felt vanished when he turned and smiled upon me. I told him that I wished to know about Free Trade, and since there was nothing he liked better to talk about, and too, since there were few who could talk better about anything than he could
