This is a magnificent morning. This shady front porch is the right vantage-ground to dictate from. There isn’t a softer, peacefuller prospect than this anywhere in the earth. There isn’t a bluer sky,Ⓐtextual note even over Sweden. There isn’t a more bewitching arrangement of white cloudlets to be found in any sky this side of Australia.Ⓐtextual note Monadnock is so close byⒺexplanatory note, in the divine atmosphere of this morning, that I almost think I could stretch out and rest my elbow in the crotch of its twin peaks as in a crutch. Monadnock is always impressive, always majestic, always beautiful, with a beauty whose phases are as manifold as those that are working their enchantmentsⒶtextual note upon that valley yonder, which stretches away and away, on a morning like this, until its hundred shades of green melt into blue,Ⓐtextual note and the blue becomes a dream and melts and mingles with the base of heavenⒶtextual note under the remote horizon.

This is not a time nor a place to damn Webster, yet it must be done. It is a duty. Let us proceed. It is not my purpose, in this history, to be more malicious toward any person than I am. I am not alive. I am dead. I wish to keep that fact plainly before the reader. If I were alive I should be writing an autobiography on the usual plan. I should be feeling just as malicious toward Webster as I am feeling this moment—dead as I am—but instead of expressing it freely and honestly, I should be trying to conceal it; trying to swindle the reader, and not succeeding. He would read the malice between the lines, and would not admire me. Nothing worse will happen if I let my malice have frank and free expression. The very reason that I speak from the grave is that I want the satisfaction of sometimes saying everything that is in me instead of bottling the pleasantest of it up for home consumption. I can speak more frankly from the grave than most historians would be able to do, for the reason that whereas they would not be able to feel Ⓐtextual note dead,Ⓐtextual note howsoever hard they might try, I myself am able to do that. They would be making believe to be dead. With me, it is not make-believeⒶtextual note. They would all the time be feeling,Ⓐtextual note in a tolerably definite way,Ⓐtextual note that that thing in the grave which represents them is a conscious entity; conscious of what it was saying about people; an entity capable of feeling shame; an entity capable of shrinking from full and frank expression, for they believe in immortality. They believe that death is only a sleep,Ⓐtextual note followed by an immediateⒶtextual note waking, and that their spirits are conscious of what is going on here below and take a deep and continuous interest in the joys and sorrows of the survivors whom they love and don’t.

But I have long ago lost my belief in immortality—also my interest in it. I can say, now, what I could not say while alive—things which it would shock people to hear; things [begin page 69] which I could not say when alive because I should be aware of that shock and would certainly spare myself the personal pain of inflicting it. When we believe in immortality we have a reason for it. Not a reason founded upon information, or even plausibilities, for we haven’t any. Our reason for choosing to believe in this dream is that we desire immortality, for some reason or other, I don’t know what. But I have no such desire. I have sampled this life, and it is sufficient. Another one would be another experiment. It would proceed from the same source as this one. I should have no large expectations concerning it, and if I may be excused from assisting in the experiment I shall be properly grateful. Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born—a hundred million years—and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.

It is understandable that when I speak from the grave it is not a spirit that is speaking; it is a nothing; it is an emptiness; it is a vacancy; it is a something that has neither feeling nor consciousness. It does not know what it is saying. It is not aware that it is saying anything at all, therefore it can speak frankly and freely, since it cannot know that it is inflicting pain, discomfort, or offenceⒶtextual note of any kind.

Some people had a prejudice against Webster which I did not share. They disapproved of him because he was a Jew. At least they said he was a Jew, and they professed to know that he was a Jew. I have no prejudices against JewsⒺexplanatory note. I have nothing that resembles a prejudice against Jews. To me, Jews are just merely human beings, and to my mind the difference between one human being and another is not a matter of the slightest consequence. As between a crocodile and an alligator there is no real choice, to my mind, therefore why should there be a choice between Jew and Christian—or between anybody and anybody else? To be a human being of any kind is a hard enough lot, and unpleasant and disreputable in the best of circumstances. Therefore why should a man think more of himself, being a Christian, than he thinks of his neighbor who has escaped that privilege?

One of these prejudiced people said to me that he could not abide Webster because he was a Jew. It seemed to me an unkind feeling, and I explained to him that I was destitute of it,Ⓐtextual note and tried to reason him into coming up and standing with me on my higher and nobler plane. I said I would always try to be just to any human being, in any circumstances, and be as prompt and interested in getting him out of the way as if I had a personal interest in accomplishing it. HoweverⒶtextual note Ⓔexplanatory note, I am wandering from Webster and the Grant Memoirs, which is my subject for the present.

I am talking freely about Webster because I am expecting my future editors to have judgment enough and charity enough to suppress all such chapters in the early editions of this book, and keep them suppressed, edition after edition, until all whom they could pain shall be at rest in their graves. But after that,Ⓐtextual note let them be published. It is my desire, and at that distant date they can do no harm.

I go back, now, to the concluding sentence of yesterday’s dictation.

In the history of the United States there had been one officer bearing that supreme and stately and simple one-word title, “General.”Ⓐtextual note Possibly there had been two. As to that I do not remember. In the long stretch of years lying between the American Revolution and our Civil WarⒶtextual note, that title had had no existence. It was an office which was special in its nature. It did not belong among our military ranks. It was only conferrable by Act of Congress and upon a person specially named in the Act. No one could inherit it. No one could succeed to it by promotion. It had been conferred upon General Grant, but he had surrendered it to become PresidentⒺexplanatory note. He was now in the grip of death, with the compassionate and lamenting eyes of all the nation upon him—a nation eager to testify its gratitude to him by granting any wish that he might express. It was known to his friends that it was the dearest ambition of his heart to die a GeneralⒶtextual note. On the last day of Mr. Arthur’s term and of the Congress then sitting, a bill to confer the titleⒶtextual note was taken up, at the last moment. There was no time to lose. Messengers were sent flying to the White House. Mr. Arthur came in all haste to the Capitol. There was great anxiety and excitement. And, after all, these strenuous efforts were instituted too late!Ⓐtextual note In the midst of the taking of the vote upon the bill the life of the CongressⒶtextual note expired. No, would have expired—but some thoughtful person turned the clock back half an hour, and the bill went through!Ⓐtextual note Mr. Arthur signed it at once, and the day was saved.

The news was dispatchedⒶtextual note to General Grant by telegram, and I was present, with several others, when it was put into his hands. Every face there betrayed strong excitement and emotion—except one, General Grant’s. He read the telegram, but not a shade or suggestion of a change exhibited itself in his iron countenanceⒺexplanatory note. The volume of his emotion was greater than all the other emotions there present combined, but he was able to suppress all expression of it and make no sign.

Then the eulogies began. Sherman was present,Ⓐtextual note Sheridan was present,Ⓐtextual note Schofield, LoganⒺexplanatory note, and half a dozen other bearers of famous military names were there. The orators always began by emptying Niagaras of glory upon Grant. They always came and stood near him, and over him, and emptied the Niagara down on him at short range, but it had no more effect upon him than if he had been a bronze image. In turn, each orator passed from Grant to Sherman, then to Sheridan, and to the rest, and emptied barrels of inflamed praise upon each. And in every case it was as if the orator was emptying fire [begin page 71] upon the man, the victim so writhed and fidgeted and squirmed and suffered. With a spy-glass you could have picked out the man that was being martyrized, at a distance of three miles. Not one of them was able to sit still under the fiery deluge of praise except that one man,Ⓐtextual note Grant. He got his Niagara every quarter of an hour for two hours and a half, and yet when the ordeal was over he was still sitting in precisely the same attitude which he had assumed when he first took that chair. He had never moved a hand or foot, head, or anything. It would have been a sufficiently amazing thing to see a man sit without change of position during such a stretch of time without anything whatever on his mind, nothing to move him, nothing to excite him; but to see this one sit like that for two hours and a half under such awful persecution, was an achievement which I should not have believed,Ⓐtextual note if I had not seen it with my own eyes.