I too mean to be out of politics. The ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment gives me the boon of equality before the law, terminates my enlistment, and discharges me cured.

The California fever is not likely to take us off.... There is neither romance nor glory in digging for gold after the manner of the pictures in the geography of diamond washing in Brazil.

In the great and deep qualities of mind, heart, and soul, there is no change. Homer and Solomon speak to the same nature in man that is reached by Shakespeare and Lincoln. but in the accidents, the surroundings, the change is vast. All things now are mobile--movable.

There are two tendencies in all our war talk.... The first is to boast, if not of ourselves and our deeds, at least of our army, our corps, our regiments. The other is to find fault with, to criticize, to censure, to condemn others. If there is a victory, we gained it and must have the credit of it. If there is a failure, it was the fault of the other fellow,--he must be blamed for it.

It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times.

My father and mother in 1817 were forty-nine days on the road with their emigrant wagons [from Vermont] to Ohio. More than two days for each hour that I spent in the same journey.

The sacred obligation to the Union soldiers must not - will not be forgotten nor neglected. But those who fought against the Nation cannot and do not look to it for relief. Confederate soldiers and their descendants are to share with us and our descendants the destiny of America. Whatever, therefore, we their fellow citizens can do to remove burdens from their shoulders and to brighten their lives is surely in the pathway of humanity and patriotism.