more joking on the part of the public. The crowd stood in silent awe to see him pass.
As he entered the train, some of the officials saluted him, and he disengaged his hand from his son's arm to return the salute. Some ladies bowed to him, and he returned their salutations with instant courtesy; and so he entered the car and was whirled away up the pleasant shores of the Hudson River. Naturally he thought of West Point, which had seemed so beautiful to him when he first saw it, a country youth of seventeen, and it seemed more beautiful still, now that as a dying man of three score years and three he was looking upon it for the last time. As he passed it, he turned to his wife and smiled a sad smile, and tried to speak, but could not—his voice was utterly gone.
The day after Grant's arrival at Mount McGregor was made memorable by a significant message. After returning from a walk which he seemed to enjoy, Grant grew restless and unaccountable in action. He moved to and fro in the cottage as if seeking something, and at last, by signs, he made known his wish for pencil and paper. Being furnished therewith, he sat writing busily for some time, and then handed two letters to Colonel Grant. One was addressed to Dr. Douglas; the other one bore the superscription: "Memoranda for my family."
There was something ominous in his action, and the son tore open the letter in great anxiety. It was a message of death. "I feel that I am failing," he had written; and then passed on to certain things which he wished taken care of after his death.
The family were thrown into an agony of grief, but the General sat quietly in his chair, as if resignedly waiting the end. Fear was not in his face; only weariness and lofty patience. His work was done. He had given up the fight. His invincible will to live was withdrawn; henceforward the physicians must fight alone.
The days that followed were simply days of pain and brave endurance, as his life forces slowly ebbed away. Occasionally he hobbled out into the sunshine on the piazza, but for the most part he kept to his chair and mused in statue-like immobility on incommunicable themes.
People from the surrounding country came in procession past the cottage, eager to catch a glimpse of the most renowned man of his time. The railway brought other swarms of curious or sympathetic tourists, and they stole near and gazed silently upon the dying man, and then moved on. He was not annoyed as another might have been by these passing shadows. Once he wrote of them: "To pass my time pleasantly, I should like to talk with them if I could." If they bowed to him he returned their salutes; and once, when a woman passing removed her bonnet, he struggled to his feet and removed his hat in acknowledgment. His favorite seat was a willow chair which stood at the northeast corner of the veranda, and there he sat during the middle hours of each day to enjoy the sun and air; as it grew chill, he returned to his fireside. He listened as courteously to the spokesman of a troop of school children, or to a little girl presenting a bouquet, as to a delegation of leading citizens or foreign journalists.
PASSAGES FROM GRANT'S LAST CONVERSATIONS.
Toward the latter part of June, Dr. Shrady was summoned to see him. He seemed to find a pleasure in his young physician, who was a keen, alert man, military in his decision and promptness: a man of humor, also, and a certain buoyancy of spirits. With him Grant had a great deal of conversation, laborious on the latter 's part, for he was obliged to write every word.
"I am having a pretty tough time, doctor," he wrote in answer to a question, "though I do not suffer so much acute pain. … My trouble is in getting my breath. … I sleep pretty well, though rarely more than an hour at a time. … I am growing lighter every day, although I have increased the amount of food."
Alluding to his work, he said, "I have no connected account now to write. Occasionally I see something that suggests a few remarks. … At times it taxes my brain to work, now it would not. If I had a chapter to write in my book, it would give me pleasure to write it. I am thankful, however, that the work is done and I am not to add to it."
Though he was pain-weary and foreboding death, he joked a little. Once he alluded to the doctor's close-cut hair, and said it was done in order that, if the doctor was stopped at Sing Sing, on his way to Mount McGregor, he would be properly clipped. During an examination of his throat, he wrote in explanation of an attempt to whisper another jocose remark: "I said if you want anything larger in the way of a spatula—is that what you call it?—I saw a man behind
