It is said that President Grant had made up his mind to sign the bill, and sat down to write out his reasons, but that he found them so unsatisfactory that he changed his mind and sent in his veto message.

I had not been disposed to believe this until I was told, a little while ago, by Secretary Boutwell that he had the statement that that was the fact from the lips of Grant himself.

If that be true, the President must have changed his mind twice.

When the bill was pending in the House of Representatives, my wife's father, a very simple- hearted and excellent merchant of Worcester, who spent seventy years of life in business on the same spot, visited us in Washington.

I took him up to see Grant.