Assuredly in your case, I am incapable of even so much as the covert thought of either, entertaining for you absolute respect and regard.

But, my dear Mr.President, I do not think that you appreciate the overwhelming force of the revenue reform issue, which has made you its idol.
[Illustration: A Corner of "Mansfield"-- Home of Henry Watterson] If you will allow me to say so, in perfect frankness and without intending to be rude or unkind, the gentlemen immediately about you, gentlemen upon whom you rely for material aid and energetic party management, are not, as to the Tariff, Democrats at all; and have little conception of the place in the popular mind and heart held by the Revenue Reform idea, or, indeed of any idea, except that of organization and money.
Of the need of these latter, no man has a more realizing sense, or larger information and experience, than I have.

But they are merely the brakes and wheels of the engine, to which principles and inspirations are, and must always be, the elements of life and motion.

It is to entreat you therefore, in your coming letter and address, not to underestimate the tremendous driving power of this Tariff issue, and to beg you, not even to seem to qualify it, or to abridge its terms in a mistaken attempt to seem to be conservative.
You cannot escape your great message of 1887 if you would.

I know it by heart, and I think that I perfectly apprehend its scope and tenor.